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).
After taking or placing out of Introductory Composition, students may elect English 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. More experienced writers may apply for admission to specialized sections of English 227 (Playwriting), English 323 (Fiction or Poetry), 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 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 (3 in 226; 6 in 299, 426, and 499). All elections require permission of the professor, on an election authorization (override) form to be turned in at CRISP and also on a departmental approval form. GSTA's are not normally authorized to supervise independent study.
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 six essays, with considerable 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. Course descriptions for individual
sections will be available after November 19 in 224 Angell Hall.
125. College Writing. ECB writing assessment.
(4). (Introductory Composition). .
Like English 124 (Writing and Literature), English 125 (College
Writing) prepares students for the various kinds of academic writing
required of them as undergraduates at the University of Michigan.
In addition to informal exercises or impromptu essays, students
can expect to write six or more formal papers exemplifying the
various modes of discourse which comprise our academic community.
Individual course descriptions will be available for reference in 224 Angell Hall after November 19. For all English classes, registered students must be present at each of the first two class meetings to claim their places. Any student who does not meet this requirement may be dropped from the course.
217. Sophomore Seminar. English 124 or
125, or permission of instructor. (3). (HU).
This exciting range of courses will give the student the opportunity
to focus early in the College career on a sharply defined topic
or body of literary works, and to do so in a seminar format, with
much emphasis on discussion and writing. Whatever the topic of the seminar, students will be introduced to large questions of
how one interprets and values the works one investigates, of the
relation between those works and the cultural order of which they
are a part, and of the function(s) of criticism at the present
time. Sophomore Seminars will be limited to approximately 20 students, and will serve to fulfill the College's Humanities Distribution
requirement.
Section 001. Imitation and Invention in Modern Literature : This seminar will examine the ways modern writers establish their authority and identity by appropriating and transforming old texts to create new narrative traditions. We will discuss the ideological and artistic reasons which prompt literary borrowings and how narrative imitations generate new forms of language and representation. Above all, this course will introduce the concept of intertextuality, the process by which old texts are rewritten as new ones and real historical events are turned into narratives. We will examine these literary relationships by reading a cross-section of international writers in English. The course will begin by discussing Doctorow's rewriting of Von Kleist's "Michael Kolhauss" in Ragtime, and his use of historical episodes in the novel. We will then proceed to examine the triangular relationship between Charles Johnson's Middle Passage and Melville's Benito Cereno (itself a rewriting of the Armistead slave revolt) and Robert Hayden's poem, "The Middle Passage." We will then examine the structural relationship between a European novel (Conrad's Under Western Eyes ) and an African text (Ngugi's A Grain of Wheat ). The seminar will conclude by discussing intertextuality in novels by women, works which raise a different set of questions about literary traditions, narrative conventions, and genre. After comparing Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (England) to Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, we will discuss the relationship between two novels by Nigerian writers, Flora Nwapa's Efuru and Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood. Assignments will include three short papers and a final examination. WL:1 Cost:3 (Gikandi)
Section 002. Hamlet in Its Contexts : Hamlet is probably Shakespeare's most popular and familiar play. To get some idea of why this might be, we will start the course by looking carefully at the play, both as something to read and as something to see on a stage. Then we will consider some of the contexts of the play, most obviously, other plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and also discussions of relevant bits of history and psychoanalysis and various kinds of literary criticism. Throughout we will try to keep the dramatic nature of the play in mind as a reference for the utility of these contextual readings-what help would they be to a director or an actor doing Hamlet ? There will be a final exam, an in-term exam, and several short (about three pages) papers. WL:1 (Lenaghan)
Section 003. 20th Century Irish Literature : Yeats, Joyce, Shaw, O'Casey, Beckett, Heaney-these are just a few of this century's outstanding Irish literary figures. We will read a number of their works (and quite a few by lesser-known, contemporary authors) with an eye toward gaining an understanding of the historical, political and cultural contexts which fostered them. Trends in Ireland's literary developments, social formations, and popular culture will all be fair game for our explorations. (The issues facing Irish women writers of this century will be of particular concern.) The only prerequisites for this course are an interest in literature and a curiousity about things Irish. (The latter includes anything from Celtic legends to The Pogues.) Most of our work will be done through class discussion, spurred by your frequent, energetic contributions and presentations. Additional requirements (probably) will include two papers and an exam. WL:1 Cost:3 (Martin)
Section 004. Writing Alternatives to the Modern State: Literature Between "The Wars." This class will examine the relationship of women to state and literary empires in the wake of World War I. By focusing upon some influential texts of the period we will consider the relationship between gender and writing, as well as the significance of location (both geographical and imaginary) on the major tenets of modernism. Readings for the course will include: Woolf's A Room of One's Own; Forster's A Passage to India; Burdekin's Swastika Night; Orwell's 1984; Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God; Larsen's Quicksand; Baker's Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance; Kim (ed.) The Gender of Modernism; Benstock's Women Writers of the Left Bank; and a course pack which will include short stories and poetry by other writers of the era. There will be a midterm, final, two 2-page response papers, and two longer papers. WL:1 (Snyder)
Section 005. Novels of Initiation. In novels of Initiation characters encounter fundamental experiences in the process of moving toward adulthood. The tentative selections-subject to change-include Thomas Berger, Little Big Man; H.D., Hermione; Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie; Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man; William Faulkner, The Reivers; Jayne Anne Phillips, Machine Dreams; J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye; and Alice Walker, The Color Purple. Work will include two papers, a mid-term, and a final. Most of the class work will be done through discussion. The grading will take into account the norm (mechanics and style) as well as the contents of the papers. Participation in discussion, like regular attendance, will also figure in the grading. Short quizzes will be added if necessary to insure keeping up with the reading. WL:1 Cost:2 (Blotner)
Section 006. Literacy. For Winter Term, 1992, this course is jointly offered with Linguistics 277.
Section 007. Reading and Writing About Modern Poetry. This is a seminar in reading and writing about modern poetry written in English. One part of the seminar's purpose is to develop skills of close reading particularly applicable to poetry but also useful in any medium of written discourse. Another is to read poems in their cultural context, and a third is to offer practice in writing a research paper. The paper will be 10-12 pages written and rewritten in two segments, the first segment establishing a cultural context for the poetry that is examined in the second. Seminar meetings in the latter half of the semester will be partly devoted to students' presentation of their research. WL:1 Cost:1 (Fader)
223. Creative Writing. English 124 or
125 or equivalent. (3). (Excl). May not be repeated for credit.
All sections of 223 teach the writing of two of the following three genres: fiction (including personal narrative), drama, and poetry. Different sections will emphasize the individual genres
to varying degrees. Classwork involves the discussion of the process
of writing and the work of a few published authors. Students will
do exercises meant to develop a sensitivity to language and a
facility with evocative detail, voice, form, and so forth. Most
classroom time, however, is devoted to reading and discussion
of student writing. A final portfolio of revised finished work
of 35-50 manuscript pages may be required.
All sections of English 223 will have course descriptions available for reference in 224 Angell Hall after November 19.
225. Argumentative Writing. English 124
or 125 or equivalent. (4). (Excl).
This course will develop ways of exploring and defending positions
ideas, and beliefs in writing. Attention will be paid to processes
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 strategies or 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. Classes
are usually run on a discussion/workshop basis, with students
sharing drafts of papers and examining professional writing from
periodicals or from a text book of collected essays.
All sections of English 225 will have course descriptions available for reference in 224 Angell Hall after November 19.
227. Introductory Playwriting. (3). (Excl).
Section 001. A crash course immersion into the world of professional
playwriting. Original student work is read aloud each week by
actors, then critiqued in workshop fashion by the class. Modeled
after the Playwrights Units at such distinguished Off-Broadway
Theaters as Circle Repertory Company and Ensemble Studio Theater, student playwrights are expected to write two revised one-act
plays over the course of the semester, see one play a week, read
at least one play a week, meet weekly with an assigned partner, have weekly conferences with the instructor, and keep a journal.
Mid-term and end of the year performances are open to the public.
Instructor is a New York-based playwright and screenwriter with
Regional theater and Off-Broadway credits (Arena Stage, GeVa, Victory Gardens, Circle Rep, Manhattan Theater Club) and the expectations
of the workshop are of a similarly professional nature. To enroll, put name on waitlist at CRISP, come to the first day of class
with dramatic-writing sample and compelling idea for an original
play (class size limited to 15 writers). WL:1 Cost:2 (Roth)
239. What is Literature? English 124 or
125, or permission of instructor. (3). (HU).
Section 002. We will try to answer the question posed by
our title by reading-closely, at times even minutely-a number
of works in a variety of forms (poetry, prose, drama, and film)
and genres (comedy, tragedy, dramatic monlogue, the novel, autobiography, etc.) Some of the issues we will be facing as we do so include: the construction/creation/mystification of a notion of the self
itself; the nature of dramatic action, and its reflections in
fiction and film; the literary canon, how it was constructed, dismantled, and reconstructed; and why (or why not) we should think about these things. The texts we will study include: Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience; Rosengarten, ed., All God's Dangers: The Autobiography of Nate Shaw; Dickens, Great Expectations; Shakespeare, Twelfth Night;
Kingston, The Woman Warrior; and a film or two. Requirements
include: Four short papers and a final exam and alert presence
in class. WL:1 Cost:1 (Freedman)
Section 003. In the course, we will read mainly poems, plays, short stories, and one or two novels. In class meetings
and assigned essays, our discussion of assigned works will raise
questions and topics like these: 1) How the serious study of literature
may relate to "just reading" poems and stories, 2) What
it can mean to just read a poem or a story (or a telephone directory
or a basketball program or a library graffito or a televised talking
head)-and whether just reading can be distinguished from one's
interpretation or evaluation of literature, 3) Whether one's own
intuitions in response to poems and stories are to be "trusted"-and how personal intuitions may relate to scholarly disquisitions, 4) Whether the "serious study" of literature should
be taken seriously, 5) How the features of a poem or story figure
in a reader's making of its meaning, 6) How the pleasure derived
from reading good poems and stories may or may not be distinguished
from pleasures derived from such as these: drugs, aerobics, philately, yoga, gossip, horticulture, baseball, 7) Whether one can confirm
or validate for others the world that one makes of the text of
a story or a poem-and how readers have tried to do so over the
past century or so, 8) How the world of poems or stories may relate
to the times and places of their makers, as to those of readers.
In this section of the course, all written work will be entered
in *Confer for all members of the class to read. Regular participation
in the (computer-) course conference is an unwaivable requirement
for credit in the course. Written Work: SHORT weekly (journal-like)
responses to assigned readings, short bi-weekly essays, short
critical responses to the responses and essays of others. In meetings
of the class, there will a handful of interruptible lectures, much discussion, and-in the final weeks of the term-small-group
presentations. WL:1 (Van't Hul)
Section 004. In asking the question "What is Literature?" we will be more interested in exploring boundaries and characteristics of different types of writing than in arriving at a specific answer. In that process of exploration we will look back upon our experiences as readers as well as examining a variety of texts. Texts will include long and short fiction, drama, film, poetry, "new" journalism, and essays, drawn from a wide range of cultures and historical periods. A more detailed list is available upon request from the instructor. WL:1 Cost:3 (Howes)
Section 005. In this class we will think seriously
about the kinds of things we do and say about literature. Its
goal is to help you become more self-reflective and critical as
you read and write about books. We will achieve this goal by exploring
together some fundamental and provocative questions. How do we
decide what "literature" is in the first place? What
is at stake when we decide whether a work of literature is good
or bad? How can different assumptions and theories about literature
change the way we interpret a single work? How do we talk about the "context" of a work of-literature? We will explore these questions through coordinated readings of literary, non-literary, and critical writings. The literature we read will be a diverse
selection of novels, stories, and poems, and will include Emily
Brontë's Wuthering Heights, Zora Neale Hurston's Their
Eyes Were Watching God, and William Faulkner's As I Lay
Dying. There will be three short papers, a final exam, and frequent informal writing exercises. Participation in class discussion
will be mandatory. WL:1 (Pinch)
Section 006. We will use Fitgerald's The Great Gatsby
(USA); Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (Nigeria); Kamala
Makandaya's Nectar in a Sieve (India) to organize our thoughts about how, when, and why definitions of and approaches
to texts and contexts, to universities and market-places, etc. shape or undermine what we mean when we talk about "literature."
It would be interesting to also read, say, narratives from religious
texts, narratives with "plot," "god," "character,"
"climax," etc. and then check ourselves to see how available
for a range of interpretations such kinds of texts are. Thus, in addition to our three "standard" and "recognizable"
books, we will test ourselves not only across cultures, as above, but also across class, commercial, gender, etc. lines. This class
will function by way of lectures-as well as short, written reports
around which class discussion will take place. WL:1 (Johnson)
Section 007. The Art of Interpretation: An Act of the Mind. This course is primarily designed to help you join a community of people who carry on a continuing, informed conversation about literature. The literature studied will reflect both the social issues of the times and each author's unique shaping of that material. We want to read closely not only to see what an author says but how she or he says it. Thus, our readings will often focus on the dynamics of the imaginative process. Moreover, if we begin this term finding ourselves reading, rhythmically, somewhat slow, understated works, we will progressively find ourselves in the midst of the potentially explosive energy of Beckett's Rockaby, Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman, and Irvings' A Prayer for Owen Meany. The format of the course will be discussion and more discussion; the focus will be on the exchange of ideas. The requirements of the class will include: two thoughtful and analytical essays (8pp./ea.); a short weekly response to a text; and a comprehensive final exam. Although still tentative, the readings will be selected from the works of the following authors: Browning, Dickens, Hardy, Hawthorne, James, Joyce, Yeats, Eliot, H.D. Wang, Toni Morrison. Naylor, Atwood, A. Tyler, Dorris, Allende, Erdrich, Hong Kingston, Julia Alvarez, and Marmon Silko. WL:1 Cost:3 (Back)
Section 008. This course explores some fundamental questions about the meaning and significance of the study of written and oral "literature." In addition to examining the historical development of literary studies itself, we'll explore some of the varying conceptions of and attitudes toward literature in different periods and cultures. We'll explore some basic theories and methods that are used to think about and write about literature both by reading accessible theoretical texts and by writing about a variety of literary-critical forms from different periods and cultures. By examining how literary and critical forms and practices shape and are shaped by changes in technology (such as the invention of print and t.v.), in socio-political institutions (such as the university), in economic structures, and in cultural customs and beliefs, we'll analyze what our own current literary-critical practices reveal about American cultural habits. Discussion format. Brief weekly writing assignments, occasional oral presentations, a journal, and a term essay-project. Cost:3 WL:1 (Ross)
Section 009. This course will introduce students to literature's formal aspects-how it is put together, to what end, with what effect-with attention to different literary works' relationship to the culture from which they arose and which they in turn helped produce. We will be focusing on American literature in particular, from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and we will examine both canonical and non-canonical works (i.e. "classics" and "popular fiction"), works by both women and men, and will discuss the present state of literary studies, a field itself now attempting to answer the question of what is "literature." There will be three papers, a midterm and a final. Attendance is mandatory. WL:1 Cost:2 (Barnes)
Section 010. Good question! Even if we don't quite or can't quite answer it, it lets us ask a lot of subsidiary questions that ought to provoke our thought-questions that may seem simple but, on reflection, aren't. What are books for? Pleasure? Instruction? Sleep? Why does anyone treasure or admire a book? Under what or whose influence? How does a book get to be thought a great book or a good book? Then again, what is fiction? What is a poem? Why? Who decided? When? How does a tradition get started; why does it stop? Is "literature" concentrated in any particular medium? Print? TV? Speech? Electronic communication? -In order to explore such questions, we'll read Ong's Orality and Literacy, Tutuola's The Palm Wine Drinkard, Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Conrad's Heart of Darkness, some short stories, a few critical essays, and quite a number of poems. We'll also read and analyze various kinds of "non-literary" prose, part of a Harlequin Romance, and part of the recent best-selling hoax The Education of Little Tree. We may have a storyteller come to class, but if not we will experiment with telling. The class may determine part of the syllabus. We shall write three essays on increasingly challenging topics. Collaborative work will be permitted but not required. Some writing will be directed primarily to the class, not the professor. The final exam will test critical thinking about the course readings and about a short new text. WL:1 (Smith)
240. Introduction to Poetry. Prerequisite
for concentrators in the Regular Program and in Honors. (3). (HU).
Section 001. The aim of this course is to deepen the rewards
of reading poetry by understanding its nature and how it achieves
its effects. Much of our work in this term will therefore be devoted
to cultivating a common critical vocabulary which will enable
us to resond intelligently to as many different forms of poetry
as possible. The emphasis will be upon close readings of various
British and American writers, with the last few weeks reserved
for a study of the works of an individual poet. To encourage an
appreciation of the oral nature of poetry, some memorization and recitals will be required, together with a series of short papers
and a final exam. Primary text: Norton Anthology. WL:1
(Larson)
Section 002. In this course we read and study poems rather carefully so that we can read poetry with more enjoyment and knowledge. This activity is prerequisite to concentrating in English. The course can also be a good one for students not intending an English concentration but who want to know more about poetry. We go by as much reading of poems in class and as much discussion as we can. We invite familiarity with the main manifestations of English and American verse through the close reading of a given few. That way we can hope to get some sense of the range of lyric poetry as well as some skill at seeing how different kinds of poems are put together and how they work; and this not for its own sake but so that we can know more clearly, enjoy more deeply. Toward the close of the course we will study the work of one major poet-perhaps Yeats or Frost or Dickinson. There will be a number of written exercises, two relatively short papers, one hour exam and a final exam. (Cost:2 WL:1) (McNamara)
Section 003. We shall study the traditional and modern forms of English and American poetry, with special attention to the close reading of great examples of the principal forms. We shall proceed chiefly by discussion, supported by short papers, quizzes, a midterm, and a final exam. Participation in a computer conference is a required part of the course. A major object is to enable students to read and appreciate poems written from points of view and with purposes not immediately obvious or even sympathetic to an unskilled modern reader. English 240 is a prerequisite for English concentrators but it is open to all University undergraduates. WL:1 (Cloyd)
Section 004 and 005. 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," one or two formal papers of analysis, a midterm, and a final. Class proceeds by discussion. Text is the complete Norton Anthology of Poetry. WL:1 Cost:1 (Zwiep)
Section 006. Honors : This course is for anyone interested in reading poetry with increased pleasure and understanding. We will read a wide range of poems of different kinds and periods, and try to develop skills useful in the analysis and discussion of poetry. Close reading of specific poems will be used to illustrate questions of form, rhyme and rhythm, imagery, tone and content. There will be numerous short, ungraded (but required) writing assignments, group presentations, one or two longer papers, a midterm and a final exam. Other requirements for the course are regular attendance and active participation in class; final grades will reflect all the requirements. Required text: Norton Anthology of Poetry. WL:1 (McSparran)
Section 007. Our aims for this course will be to learn how to understand and enjoy poetry better, and how to articulate both our understanding and our enjoyment. Our method will involve our (1) reading a number of short poems at the rate of one or two per class; (2) discussing them carefully together; and (3) writing about them both in daily in-class "scribbles" and in short papers. Our final exam will ask you to write about poems, and about poetry. One of the nice things about studying poetry is that you can look at the whole poem at once, usually: you don't have to turn the page. That doesn't mean, however, that you don't have to work hard-it just means that the hard work is easier to do! Our texts are the third edition of the Norton Anthology of Poetry and Seamus Heaney's Selected Poems 1966-1987. WL:1 Cost:1 (Hornback)
Section 008. This course does not attempt a history of poetry, but rather a nonhistorical investigation into the choices poets make. If you've ever tried to write poems, you may have felt the dizzying sense of possible rhythms, sounds, tones of voice, and structures open to a poet. When he or she begins to write (or rewrite), should the poem sound "like poetry" or like prose? Should it rhyme? Should the poet use a traditional form? How should the poem select its vocabulary? Should it imitate the speaking voice? Should it sound like a song? Where and how should the poet break the lines? And how should all these options be combined? This course aims to heighten your awareness of the various decisions made at the poem's every turn, and to give you the tools with which to discuss them. By the same token, it also aims to make poetry more accessible and more fun. Readings include Shakespeare's "Sonnets," Keats' "Odes," Eliot's "The Waste Land," and Bishop's "Geography III." Requirements: 3 papers, midterm, final, and brief, hopefully enjoyable in-class writing exercises. WL:1 Cost:5 (Terada)
Section 009. This course aims to introduce students to kinds of poetry in English, to some of the techniques poets use in the making of poems, and to the pleasures and skills of reading poetry. We shall read and listen to many poems written by American, Canadian, British, and Irish poets, and to some poems translated from other languages. Texts will likely include an anthology, as well as a few books of poems by individual authors. The course will proceed by discussion and the occasional lecture, with major evaluative emphasis on the student's participation in discussions, and the quality of the written work. Students should plan to write on poems and their designs in several short response papers, and in two longer essays of 5-7 pages each. There will be a midterm hour exam and a final exam. In conjunction with Michigan's Visiting Writing series, there will also be several opportunities to hear poets read their work in Ann Arbor, in living color. WL:1 (Heininger)
Section 010. Honors : A course in how to-or ways to-understand, feel, feel out, feel about, appreciate, evaluate, and interpret poems. Poetry typically differs from ordinary language and from prose in certain qualities, and we shall try to understand how and why it does so. As we look at-and hear-poems, we shall consider such things as sound, diction, rhythm, figures of speech, the line, form, and genre, authorship, audience, and context. Our readings will come from various cultures, old and now; most readings will be British and American, most of these recent or contemporary. We'll pay some attention to the histories of poetry. By the end of the term, everyone should be able to read any linguistically available poem with confidence, to know what kind of poem it is, how it works, when it might have been composed, what it might mean, and whether it's any good. Main texts: a course pack (at Kolossos Printing), and a computer-generated Intro to Poetry (free). In addition, students will choose among several topics for independent reading, to include the study of one contemporary poet. Some of our work will be collaborative, some private. Everyone will write three essays on increasingly challenging topics. There will be a test on "technical terms," another test on the course readings, and a final exam asking for the interpretation and evaluation of some new poetry. WL:1 (Smith)
Section 011. In this section I will take a fairly traditional approach to poetry, emphasizing form, imagery, and meaning in an orderly progression. We will read well-known poems from a broad range of English literary history as well as some poems that are off the beaten track. Students should be prepared to study poems in advance of class for discussion and to write a few lines of their own poetry (not graded) now and again. There will be several videos of contemporary poets. Requirements: class attendance (absolutely mandatory) and participation based on careful reading; quite a few quizzes; short written analyses every week; a final exam. Text(s) to be announced. WL:1 Cost:2 (Crawford)
Section 012. Many students believe that the more one knows about the technical elements of poems-meter, rhyme scheme, etc-the harder and less enjoyable poetry is to read. We will try to avoid or dispel that notion in this class. By concentrating on a small number of poets, we will see that poetry can be both carefully constructed and a natural form of expression. Course requirements include three or four 5-7 page papers, a midterm, and a final. WL:1 (Artis)
245/Res. College Hums. 280/Theatre 211. Introduction
to Drama and Theatre. (4). (HU).
See Theatre and Drama 211.
(Cardullo)
270. Introduction to American Literature. (3).
(HU).
Section 001. Race and Ethnicity in Literature of the United States.
This is a special section of English 270 designed to meet the LS&A "Race or Ethnicity" requirement. Thus we
will concentrate primarily on 20th century literature and life
experiences of several racial and ethnic groups in the United
States. Among the cultures receiving special attention will be
African-American, Latino, Asian-American, Native American Indian, and Jewish American. The subject, of course, is vast, and we can
hardly hope to do more than familiarize ourselves with a small
sample of texts and issues. Two aspects of this culture and life
experience that will receive special attention are "oppression"
and "resistance." In addition, we will also consider
interactions among gender, race and ethnicity, as well as various theories of the origins and functions of racist ideology. The
writers to be studied will probably include Frederick Douglass, Jean Toomer, Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, Rodoflo Corky Gonzales, Jose Antonio Villareal, Sandra Cisneros, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Maxine Hong Kingston, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Aaron Kramer. Requirements will include a short diagnostic
writing assignment, a substantial paper, and a final examination.
WL:1 (Wald)
Section 002. This course will survey 19th and 20th century American literature, mostly fiction. Writers to be studied include: Hawthorne, Scarlett Letter and stories; Melville (stories); Twain, Huckleberry Finn; Kate Chopin, The Awakening; James, The American; Dreiser, Sister Carrie; Wharton, The House of Mirth, Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises; and Faulkner, Go Down Moses. Two short (5 page) or one long (10 page) paper will be assigned. There will be a midterm and a final exam. WL:1 Cost:2 (Beauchamp)
280. Thematic Approaches
to Literature. (3). (HU).
Section 001. Comic Responses to Catastrophe. This course is part
of the Comedy Semester. We will study a selection of modern
literature which takes thematic material traditionally treated
with "high seriousness" and casts it in an essentially
comic mode. The reading will be post-World War II fiction and drama which keeps us laughing all the way to the grave. We will, by reading these works closely, try to determine how and why they
are comic and to discover why, in our time, their mostly grisly
subject matter elicits comic responses. We will try to define
and describe the nature of comedy, a slippery and possibly hopeless-but
useful-endeavor. Our reading will be about 8 books (some fiction;
some drama; some short pieces) by some of these (or maybe several
other) authors: Kurt Vonnegut, Peter DeVries, Tom Stoppard, Philip
Roth, Edward Albee, Edward Lewis Wallant, Francine Prose, Woody
Allen. We may also see and study a film or two (e.g., Kubrick's
. Dr. Strangelove, Richardson's The Loved One,
or Gilliam's Brazil ). In addition, students will read
a 4-page anthology of comic theory from Plato and Artistotle to
Al Capp and Stephen Sondheim. The class will be mostly discussion
if its size encourages that. Should class size be large, we will
have as much discussion as possible, along with eminently interruptible
informal lecture. Requirements are two 5-7 page papers, one in-class
essay exam, an essay final, and your actively and intelligently
participating presence. The course is suitable for anyone who
enjoys reading literature, analyzing it, talking and writing about
it-while discovering why we laugh at other people's pain. WL:1
Cost:$25-50 (Bauland)
285. Introduction to Twentieth-Century Literature.
(3). (HU).
Section 001. A Rage for Chaos. This introductory course in
twentieth century literature will focus on some of the most important
novels, poems, plays, films, and stories of the century, chiefly
written in the United States, England, or Ireland. It will examine
what happened to people's views of the world when everything they
had come to value exploded. Love, marriage, friendship, religion, sanity, patriotism-all bedrocks of Western Civilization-were challenged
in a century when war, madness, bigotry, sexual passion, and alienation
became the norms. What has emerged is not so much a new order
as it is a deeper understanding of the chaos that lives within
us all. Works by T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Ernest
Hemingway, William Faulkner, the Marx Brothers, Toni Morrison, Marilyn Monroe, Eugene O'Neill, and Lawrence Kasdan, among others.
Course requirements include three papers (3-5 pp. each), a midterm
and a final. WL:1 Cost:5 (Harrison)
Section 002. An introduction to twentieth-century literature in English, our course will attempt a broad exposure to that vast and diverse material. We will study the literary traditions commonly associated with the period, experimental Modernism and Post-Modernism. We will attend as well to older traditions that have been of continuing importance in this century, Realism and the Romance, for example, while trying to get a sense of what the majority of readers have actually been reading over the last many decades: novels of crime and suspense, westerns, self-help books, and so on. We will look, further, to both that literature which has for political, historical, or other reasons long existed at the borders of dominant cultural realms and that which has, in translation, recently crossed national and linguistic borders themselves. Thus our eclectic syllabus will be arranged with an eye more to the historical representativeness of its texts than to their "coherence" as a group. Expect to give serious (and imaginative) attention to both T. S. Eliot and Micky Spillane, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Tarzan, Jean Toomer and H. G. Wells, Thomas Pynchon and Virginia Woolf, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Joan Didion, among others. This course requires no previous study in English literature at the college level. Non-majors are welcome. There will be three or four short papers, a mid-term, and a final exam. Readiness to participate in class discussions and regular attendance are expected. WL:1 Cost:2 (Leon)
Primarily for Juniors and Seniors
302. Writing About Good Books. (4). (Excl).
Section 001. The goals of this course are a) to engage students
in books that are enjoyable and instructive, and b) to help them
write more effectively and with increased pleasure. The writing
portion of the course lays great emphasis on revision. Each paper
is written in two drafts, and the main criterion for grading is the thoroughness of revision of the first draft. Participation
in a course computer conference is mandatory. There are four books
and four papers, each written in two drafts. There are no exams.
WL:1 (Meisler)
308. History of the English Language. (3).
(HU).
Section 001. The aim of this course is to introduce-and to
get students to understand for themselves-all the major aspects
of the internal development of English as a language. This will
be achieved through a combination of lectures and workshops, through the use of one of the subject's latest and most up-to-date textbooks
and its dynamic workbook; through what are promised to be enthusiastic
and vigorous lectures dealing only with the topics of the course
(i.e. all the topics covered by the textbook plus a few others);
and through lots of student homework and workshop participation.
Although dealing with traditional and conventional subject matter
in an orthodox way, this will nevertheless be a hands-on, high-energy
course, requiring a smiling and a I-really-do-want-to-do-it attitude-approach.
The texts for the course: C. M. Millward's A Biography of the English Language (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1989) and C. M. Millard's A Biography of the English Language: Workbook
to Accompany (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1990) WL:1 (Kirk)
315/Women's Studies 315.
Women and Literature. (3). (HU). May be repeated
for a total of 6 credits with department permission.
Section 001. Women Writing from the Periphery. This course
focuses primarily on the works of postcolonial and minority women
writers who are concerned with rewriting the "master narrative"
of slavery, colonialism, race and nation. The artistic processes
of decolonialization emerge as a continuing dialectic between
hegemonic systems of representation and peripheral subversion
of them. Significant attention will be paid to the ways in which the women writers create a space within and between these two
worlds. Authors will include Jean Rhys, Honor Ford Smith ed., Olive Senior, Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison, Grace Nichols. Course
requirements include three short papers and one longer one. This
course fulfills the New Traditions Requirement for English concentrators.
WL:1 Cost:3 (Gregg)
Section 002. Feminist Postmodernism: Bodies and Texts : In this course, we will attempt to sketch the contours of a feminist postmodernist politics and poetics. Our way into this ambitious project will be to focus on one particular obsession of both feminism and postmodernism: theorizing the body in the text, and the text in the body. The novels we will read all work to "rewrite" the female body by dismantling traditional patriarchal constructions of that body. Reading fiction alongside theory, we will consider how a feminist postmodernist practice untangles the politics of representation by scrutinizing the codes which have governed representations of the female body as an object to be contemplated and controlled by a male gaze. Some questions that are likely to arise include: Where does feminism, as a politics, intersect with, and diverge from, postmodernism as an aesthetics? How do new "technologies of the body," and the debates around them, work to deconstruct and reconstruct the female body? What is at stake in the feminist rethinking of the female body, particularly in terms of such postmodernist thematics as "gender-bending," de-naturalization of the "natural," the fragmentation of the body and identity? The course will be structured so as to place fictional texts and theoretical texts in dialogue with each other. Lecture and discussion. Texts will include a course pack (available at Dollar Bill Copying), and novels drawn from the following list (available at Shaman Drum): Kathy Acker, Don Quixote; Angela Carter, The Passion of the New Eve; Lois Gould, A Sea-Change; Gayl Jones, Corregidora; Toni Morrison, Beloved; Audrey Thomas, Mrs. Blood; Fay Weldon, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (or The Cloning of Joanna May ); Monique Wittig, The Lesbian Body. Requirements: Several short writing assignments; two 5-page papers; a final exam; participation in bi-weekly small discussion groups. The course fulfills the New Traditions Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1 Cost:4 (S.Robinson)
Section 003. Modernism/Postmodernism: Autobiographical Fictions. This course will examine writings by women in the 20th century from the literary periods now recognized as modernism and postmodernism. By assuming that gender matters in processes of writing and reading, the class hopes to introduce students to categories of feminist criticism and to the strategies used by women writers. It will focus, although not exclusively, on the uses of autobiographical material in writings about women writing from various class and race positions, in autobiographical writing about "americanness," in postmodern novels about the 19th century, and in novels that structure their stories around sex changes. Readings will range from Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" to Stein's "Paris, France," from Cisneros' "House on Mango Street" to Morrison's "Beloved," from a novel by a former East German writer to a lesbian mystery. Class will consist of two lectures and one day of self-facilitated small group discussions. Requirements include two short papers, a midterm and a final. This course fulfills the New Traditions Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1 (Herrmann)
Section 004. Twentieth-Century American Women Writers. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Salinger, Pynchon-these twentieth-century American men have already become part of a "Great Tradition" of American literature that traces its origins back to Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. What about twentieth-century American women writers? Do Nella Larsen and Djuna Barnes explode our vision of a canonical male tradition? How did these women help shape modernity? How was their writing influenced by the Great Depression and the World Wars? By the shopping sprees of the 50's and 80's? By Vietnam? What did Gertrude Stein say to Edith Wharton? When Toni Morrison and Sharon Olds write about children and sexuality, do they speak the same language? When we look at the differences between women writers who are themselves divided by ethnicity, race and class, can we define a Great Female Tradition? Do we want to? This course fulfills both the New Traditions and American Literature Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1 (Yaeger)
317. Literature and Culture. (3). (HU).
May be repeated for credit with department permission.
Section 001. The Condition of English : In virtually every
generation over the twelve or thirteen centuries since English
emerged in England, minor prophets have voiced deep concerns for
"the purity" of the language, have deplored its on-going
decadence. Scholars have known for nearly two centuries that change
is constant of all natural languages. What they sense in the evolution
of English is not the stench of decadence but the pungency of
life itself. But presidents and secretaries of education and governors
and commissioners and legislators and PTO members and journalists
and talk-show hosts do not take scholarly views. Concern for the
purity of the English language persists. What one scholar observed
of Americans of several decades ago remains true of us: We share
in a "national mania for correctness." There will be
no grail of linguistics purity in this course or at the end of
it: One of our quests will be for an understanding of those (a)
who think nostalgically about a time when English was pure, and (b) who imagine when and how and even why the purity has been
defiled. Some topics: (1) the idea of the "history"
of a language, (2) idiolect and dialect: personal, regional, and social varieties of English, (3) varieties of English in the dialogue
of fictions, (4) the idea of English as a "national language,"
(5) the grammatical and metaphorical life of English, (6) the
dreary ambition of real-good grammarians of English, (7) semantics:
how words in particular "change their meanings," (8) the uses and abuses of dictionairies, (9) styles and registers
of English, and (10) pragmatics: racistic, sexistic, and other
popular uses of English. The work will include readings in an
ample course pack, weekly exercises and short essays, and a journal.
Regular (weekly) participation in a Computer (Course) Conference
is an unwaivable requirement for credit in the course. WL:1 (Van't
Hul)
Section 002. The Hollywood Cinema
and the Construction of "America." In this course, we will study the ways the Hollywood film industry created, contested, and re-created models of American Identity. Itself a product of
immigrants, the Hollywood film industry both shaped and questioned
models of ethnicity and race during a period of tremendous social, political, economic, and ideological transition, both establishing
and contesting notions of a distinctive American national identity
and delineating deviations from that normative model. We will
focus largely on classic Hollywood films of the '30s and '40s, and then on the efforts of filmmakers of the '70s and '80s to
revise their import and agenda; but we will also measure these
films against fictional and non-fictional treatments of the same
issues and themes. The films we will study include: Meet Me
In St. Louis; Stagecoach; The Man Who Shot Liberty
Valance and/or The Searchers; Little Caesar; The Godfather (I and/or II ); Hester
Street; Annie Hall; Chan is Missing; Do the Right Thing. Readings will include: Rober Sklar, Movie
Made America; Owen Wister, The Virginian; Abraham
Cahan, Yekl; Mario Puzo, The Godfather; Maxine
Kingston, The Woman Warrior; Jonathan Rieder, Canarsie;
essays and stories by (among others) Henry James, William Dean
Howells, Ernest Hemingway, Zane Grey, Werner Sollors, Ronald Takaki.
Students will be asked to take a midterm and a final exam and to write one 10 page paper. This course fulfills the American
Literature Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1 Cost:2
(Freedman)
Section 003. Bigotry and Maturity in the Literature of Two
Cultures. The purpose of this course is to invite its members
to examine some assumptions of their own culture by comparing them to related assumptions in another, distant culture. Its method
will be to compare the English Renaissance as it reveals itself
in four of Shakespeare's plays with the post-World War II cultures
of Europe and America reflected in eleven plays and novels by
Kogawa, Sartre, Hochhuth, Ellison, Jones, Albee, Walker, Morrison
and Kennedy. 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
numerous in-class papers, two 2-3 page papers will be required
as preliminary versions of two 5-6 page papers that are the chief
written work of the course. No midterm or final examination given.
This course fulfills the Junior/Senior Writing requirement, and the LS&A requirement for a course in race, racism, or ethnicity, and also fulfills the New Traditions Requirement for English concentrators.
WL:1 Cost:5 (Fader)
Section 004. Colonialism and Nationalism in African Literature. In this class we will examine the spread of the English language throughout much of Africa: we will look closely at how those who brought the language to the continent with them adapted the land to its description and how those who learned the language appropriated it for their own cultural purposes. This course will cover a significant amount of historical, geographic, and literary ground but will always be interesting to those seeking to understand the sometimes contradictory, always problematic image of Africa in the West. There will be three papers, a midterm, and a final exam. This course fulfills the New Traditions Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1 (Artis)
318. Literary Types. (3). (HU). May be
repeated for credit with department permission.
Section 001. Theatre, Ritual, Myth: A Study of Contemporary Performance
Theory : The course explores the nature of theater and its
relationship to ritual and myth in contemporary performance. By
attending plays and ceremonies as well as studying written and filmed accounts, we will explore a range of performance activities that combine theater, ritual, and myth. Although some background
in theater will be helpful, the course will include an exploration
of the fundamentals of theater aesthetics. Reading will be drawn
from contemporary dramatic literature, theater theory such as
Peter Brooks' The Empty Space and Artaud's The Theater
and Its Double, and works from sociology and anthropology, such as Victor Turner's From Ritual to Theatre. We will
use productions at the University and in the surrounding area
as a laboratory, attending plays by the San Francisco Mime Troupe, "El Teatro de la Esperanza," among others, the Performance
Network, and the U of M's Department of Drama. The course method
will be lecture, discussion, and demonstration. Students will
write two papers, take an exam, and make a group presentation.
WL:1 (Cohen)
Section 002. Comedy and the Comic Muse. This course is part of the Comedy Semester. Comedy and the Comic Muse is a course designed for students who want to take part in a wide-ranging and varied exploration of ideas about comedy. Keyed to the Comedy Semester, a theme semester sponsored by LS&A, the course will be self-contained but will also make extensive use of the special programs and activities that will define the Comedy Semester-lectures, exhibitions, theatre performances, and the like. Students will read widely in comic theory and in comic literature-chiefly plays and novels; they will also be expected to attend events related to the program of the Comedy Semester. In most cases, these activities will overlap-e.g. two of the plays assigned for the course will also be available in productions on campus, a major novel in the course is written by one of the guest lecturers, films that receive special attention in the course will be the subject of an illustrated lecture. Thus the work of the course will be quite varied, and I will try to keep in mind the special demands that such a course makes on students' time. Most of our work in class will be discussion, though I will occasionally lecture. Writing for the course will include short papers, reviews of performances and exhibits, and-for interested students-opportunities for creative writing designed to reflect our wide exposure to ideas about comedy. My hope is that the course will be unusual both in its design and in the opportunities it affords for students to become involved in a subject in a variety of ways. Students who enroll in this class may wish to consider taking other courses in the Comedy Semester as well. Grades will be based on written assignments, class participation, and a final examination. WL:1 Cost:2 (Jensen)
319. Literature and Social Change. (3).
(HU). May be repeated for credit with department permission.
Section 001. Theatre and Social Change : READING will involve
some "non-political" modern drama to put issues of social
change in perspective; Boal, Brecht, Kidd, and others for a background
and ideas; and plays by progressive groups of the last 25 years-guerrilla theater, Chicano theater, Baraka's revolutionary plays, African
and Nicaraguan theatre for development, AIDS theatre, women's theatre, and contemporary community-based theatre. PRODUCTION.
Students will join one of several groups: 1) guerrilla theatre;
2) forum theatre, to take a participatory play to local institutions
of one kind or another; 3) community-based theater, helping local
people in a prison or shelter, etc., create a play. This
production will be the main thrust of the course. Students with theatre experience are welcomed, but such experience is not required.
Required is an interest in arts and social change, a willingness
to try acting in nontraditional contexts, and the desire to shape
a performance around a cause. Grading will be based upon three
short papers and the production. See instructor for permission
to enter course: 1631 Haven Hall, Thursday 9-11 plus posted extra
hours during preregistration. Cost:2 WL: Enrollment is permission
of instructor; no waitlist. (Alexander)
Section 002. The Literature of National Identity : This course will examine the complex and contradictory relation between literary texts and the question of national identity. We will try to examine the ways in which creative writers from a cross-section of "national" English literatures invent images of their national identity or question existing doctrines on nationalism and nationality. Several problems will be addressed in the course of the term: Does the narrative of the nation demand a particular literary genre such as the novel (often defined as the modern epic of the nation)? Do concepts of the nation have the same meanings and implications for postcolonial writers in Africa, India, the Caribbean, and the Pacific as they do in the Metropolitan cultures of Europe and the United States? In what ways has the English language been affected by its appropriation by previously colonized writers? Above all, in what ways is the literature of national identity revised and transformed by the affirmation (or negation) of gender, modernity, and history? The course will try to address these questions by comparing established texts (Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and Mrs. Gaskell's North and South; classical United States narratives on national identity (Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass and W. E. B. Dubois' The Souls of Black Folk ); modernists novels (Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom), and more contemporary "American" interventions into the discourse on national identity (Doctorow's Ragtime and Gloria Naylor's Linden Hills ). These texts will be compared and contrasted with literatures from the "new" traditions, including Wole Soyinka's Ake (Nigeria), George Lamming's In the Castle of my Skin ( Barbados), Bharati Mukherjee's The Middleman and Other Stories (India/USA), and Albert Wendt's Leaves of the Banyan Tree (Samoa). Our theoretical text will be Nation and Narration, edited by Homi K. Bhabha. The class will be a combination of lectures and discussion. Assignments will include a midterm exam, a research paper, and a final examination. This course fulfills the New Traditions Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1 Cost:3 (Gikandi)
320/CAAS 338. Literature
in Afro-American Culture. (3). (HU). May be repeated
for a total of 6 credits with department permission.
Section 001. This course will survey the oral and literary
forms, themes and traditions of Afro-American literature. Critical
attention will be paid to the Black oral tradition as manifest
in folktales, sermons, devotional music, blues, worksongs and contemporary forms. In addition, study of Black literate forms
such as the slave narrative and the application of the autobiography, the autobiographical essay, the novel of confrontation and liberation, as Afro-American authors use them to formulate Black identity
and consciousness, will also be considered. Particular attention
will be paid to the special problematic that a dual literary tradition, one based upon an oral medium, the other upon the devices of literacy, poses for Black authors in registering the Afro-American experience
in literature. Two short papers and a research project. This course
fulfills the New Traditions requirement for English concentrators.
WL:1 Cost:3 (Chrisman)
323. Creative Writing. Junior standing
and written permission of instructor. (3). (Excl). May be repeated
for credit.
Section 001. Media and 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 CRISP registration by conference
during office hours (posted on door of 2617 Haven 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:1 WL:3 (Wright)
Section 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, finally, 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 at CRISP and bring a manuscript to class the first evening. A list of those admitted will be posted shortly thereafter. Cost:2 WL:1 (Ezekiel)
Section 003. Fiction : This is a writing workshop designed for the graduates of English 223 or those writers who are able to compose interesting ambitious short stories without the benefit of a beginner's workshop. Students will be required to attend class faithfully, to attend some of the University's Visiting Writers Series, to read a handful of selected stories, and to produce 50 pages of typed, double-spaced, reasonably polished original fiction. The instructor is an experienced short story writer, and as such, she will focus almost exclusively on the craft of the story (as opposed to novel) writing. Interested students should realize that while the required reading for this course is light, the amount of time and energy necessary to produce 50 lively, carefully revised pages of fiction is prodigious. Enrollment for this course is limited. Thus, admission to the workshop will be determined by the quality of manuscripts (no more than 10 pages) submitted to the instructor at the first scheduled class meeting. Each applicant should come to that meeting with a fiction manuscript in hand. If the applicant doesn't have a suitable story to submit, he or she may submit some poetry or an essay. N.B.: Until the first class meeting, English 323 will be listed as closed with CRISP, so students should place their names on the waitlist during registration. WL:1 Cost:1 (Hagy)
Section 004. Fiction : This section of English 323 will be devoted almost entirely to the consideration of student work. There will be no textbook, and there will be very little in the way of exercises and assignments. The class will be run as a workshop, meeting for three hours once a week to discuss the work of our classmates. Each student accepted into the class will be required to submit fifty pages for consideration by the class over the course of the term. Learning to write also means learning to read, and each student will be required to provide written critiques of each story to the author. Students will also be expected to actively participate in class discussions. Each student will be responsible for the copying of his or her work. WL: permission of instructor. (Hynes)
Section 005. Poetry : A course in creative writing to be taught by visiting poet and fiction writer Lorna Goodison who will share her experience gathered over 20 years of writing. The course will also introduce students to several schools of poetry writing. Students should bring a sample of their writing to the first day of class. A list of those accepted will be posted shortly thereafter. Students will be required to turn in approximately 30 pages of final work at the end of the semester. Expect unusual in-class assignments. WL:1 (Goodison)
Section 006. Poetry : This class will be a workshop focusing on poetry written by the class members. Although the instructor will assign formal exercises, imitation exercises and thematic exercises, most of our time will be spent on the poems class members submit. We will discuss different, even opposing approaches to lyric and meditative poetry. Several poets, of varied poetic ambition and reputation, will visit the class, and the students will be expected to have thoughtful questions prepared. Each student will be required to turn in a final portfolio of poems at least 30 pages in length. Most of that work should be revision of work seen earlier in the semester. Each student should expect to do a short critical evaluation of a University-sponsored or Detroit-Ann Arbor area poetry reading. Each student will be required to lead a 15-30 minute class presentation on a contemporary poet. Required texts: Andrei Codrescru's Poetry Since 1970: Uplate and Dave Smith's Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets. Students interested in this course should submit 5 poems to the instructor at the English Department by 12/30/91. A list of students admitted will be posted by 1/6/92. WL: Permission of Instructor. Cost:2 (Keith Taylor)
325. Essay Writing: The Art of Exposition. (4).
(Excl).
This is an upper level composition course for students interested
in improving their writing, with particular attention paid to the development of individual style expressed in the details of
voice, tone, nuance, and rhythm. All classes will proceed on the
assumption that these basic principles inform good writing: that
wriitng is thinking; that writing well requires attention to issues
of audience; that revision is a necessary part of the writing
process; and that all writing reflects the writer's view of the
world. Class discussion will include a consideration of student
writing. To focus discussion and to provide subject matter for
writing assignments, readings by professional writers will be
assigned in most sections. Writing assignments will vary according
to instructor, but the general requirement is forty pages of prose
(300 words to a page). Course descriptions for individual sections
will be available in 224 Angell Hall after November 19.
329. Practical English. (4). (Excl).
Section 001 and 002 : Don't take this course if you want an
authoritarian instructor to provide you models for writing your
resume. Practical English is a student-run workshop that allows
its members a great measure of freedom in determining how they
will structure their time and what they will write. But it also
demands intense participation, commitment to peer groups for editing
and grading (yes, grading), and willingness to use progressive
revision for writing improvement. The workshop simulates a business
or professional environment in which work is done both individually
and collaboratively and in which writing and speaking are linked.
Students typically produce such practical forms as letters, reports, memos, summaries, proposals, speeches, working papers, essays, minutes, and evaluations. Late work is never accepted. Requirements:
attendance at class sessions and at group meetings outside of
class; timely completion of a set of standard assignments and of a corporate project chosen by the workshop (total minimum 25-30
pages of finished prose plus delivery of two speeches). No exams.
This course fulfills the upper-level writing requirement for non-concentrators.
If you are not present at one of the first two sessions your CRISPed
place will be given to someone else. Text: A Writer's Reference
by Diana Hacker (1989). WL:1 Cost:2 (Crawford)
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 about Milton, that is; the second term will begin at about that point and proceed to the present. These courses will be open to Enlgish concentrators and to non-concentrators alike. The substantial writing involved with either of the courses will fulfill the ECB Junior/Senior Writing Requirement.
351. Literature in English, 1660 to the Present. English
239 and 240. (4). (Excl).
Section 001. The Battle for Reality. Literary history is
not a matter of neat eras with conventional names. It is a battle
for your sense of reality in which a writer pits her or his vision
against those of predecessors and contemporaries as well as against the social consensus. For instance, the very question "What's
real?" would seem stupid to the eighteenth-century poet Alexander
Pope. You would know the truth, Pope argues, if your human vanity
did not do everything in its power to evade that reality. Yet
a generation later, William Blake will find Pope's desired reality
nothing better than the exhausted and disastrous remnant of our
failure of imagination. This is not a survey course, then. It
would be futile to survey three centuries of British and American
literature in any case. Rather, this course concerns episodes
in literary history, moments when the world-and accepted literary
forms-are turned upside-down. We'll focus on 18th and 19th Century
British literature, with significant forays into American and Modern literature. Fiction writers will include Swift, Austen, Brontë, Melville, and Joyce. Poets will include Pope, Blake, Wordsworth, Whitman, Dickinson, Browning, and Eliot. Emphasis will be on writing
critical essays-three will be required with revision possible
on the first two, and a final exam will follow an essay format.
Three hours of lecture with me each week, one hour of discussion
with experienced TAs; but the "lectures" too will include
discussion and debate. If your sense of the real is not unsettled
by this course, it or you will have failed its intention. This
course fulfills the ECB upper-level writing requirement and counts
as a pre-1830 course for concentrators. WL:1 (Weisbuch)
367. Shakespeare's Principal Plays. (3).
(HU).
Section 001. This course will focus on reading Shakespeare
with an eye toward performance. Students will become acquainted
with techniques of playwriting and conventions of tragedy and comedy as they apply to Shakespeare's work. Plays to be studied
include: Hamlet, Othello, A Midsummer Night's
Dream, Richard III, Macbeth, King Lear, Measure for Measure, Coriolanus, and The
Winter's Tale. There will be two lectures and one discussion
section per week; class sessions will also rely on several video
productions for illustrative material. Student evaluation will
be based on written assignments as well as examination. This course
satisfies the Pre-1830 Requirement for English Concentrators.
WL:1 Cost:2 (Brater)
Section 008. In this course we will study closely eight plays by William Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Henry IV, Part One, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. Although our goal will be to attend as intensively as possible to the rich complexity of the plays, we will be particularly concerned with the corollary issues of social identity and sexual power. The format of the class will be two lectures and one discussion section meeting per week. Requirements include attendance, three papers (4-6 pp.), a midterm and a final exam. The text will be ordered through Shaman Drum Bookshop, 313 S. State. This course fulfills the Pre-1830 Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1 Cost:2 (Schoenfeldt)
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(s) 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.
English 350 recommended. (4). (Excl). May be repeated
for a total of 8 credits.
Section 001. Renaissance Epic. The epic was the great narrative
form in which Europeon authors attempted to establish the nature
of their own culture and, in the process, their own identity as
artists. But the task was not only to create a work of art and to explore contemporary social and moral values: it was to establish
two sorts of difference a) that between their own culture and the cultures of the past, and b) that between European culture
and the cultures of peoples "at the margins" – to the
South, the Africans; to the East, the Arabs. The works we will
read are amongst the most splendid and challenging we possess.
Readings will include: Petrarch, Africa; Ariosto, Orlando
Furioso (Rolando Gone Mad for Love); Vida, Christiad;
Tasso, Jerusalem; Spenser, Faerie Queene, and Milton, Paradise Lost. There will be three essays of
moderate length (4-6 pp) a midterm, and a final examination. This
course fulfills the Pre-1600 Requirement for English concentrators.
WL:1 (Williams)
Section 002. The Development of the Self. Can one "know oneself," and how might literature contribute to the quest for truths about the inner self? In this course we will read literature that seeks to understand and express the self, ranging from works of late antiquity through to some written at the end of the seventeenth century, and including modern literature that proposes ways of conceptualizing past ideas of the self. By covering what women and men have written over this broad time span, we will be able to examine how gender as well as historical context creates the "true," "inner self." This is a course for students willing to participate actively in discussions, debates, and other group activities. Requirements: several essays, midterm and final exams, frequent writing exercises, oral reports. This course fulfills the Pre-1600 Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1 Cost:2 (Tinkle)
Section 003. The Heroic Poem and the Romance : We'll start with Beowulf as the earliest heroic poem in English, proceed to the romance in the 12th century and its subsequent medieval development-the story of Tristan and Iseult, some of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Malory's Morte Darthur -and conclude with an extended look at the 16th century fusion of romance and heroic poem in Sidney's Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia and Spenser's Faerie Queene. The writing will probably include frequent short papers, at least one longer paper, an hour exam and a final. I'll also ask you to keep journals recording your responses to the reading at least twice a week. This course fulfills the Pre-1600 Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1 Cost:2 (English)
371. Studies in Literature, 1600-1830. English
351 recommended. (4). (Excl). May be repeated for a total of 8
credits.
Section 001. Literature and the Family. The purpose of this
course is to introduce students to a broad range of English works
belonging to the period 1600-1830. By concentrating on the issue
of family, students will discuss how individual texts respond
to different configurations of society. That is, while we will
be isolating family as a theme, we will also be raising parallel
issues that influence how the family was conceived in the eighteenth
century. These related subjects include revolution, urbanization, sexuality, mercantile economics and racial politics, to name a
few. Authors to be discussed include Samuel Pepys, Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Ignatius Sancho, William Wordsworth, Jane Austen and Mary Shelley. Students will be expected to complete
two essays, one exam, and several response papers, as well as
to participate vigorously in class discussion. This course satisfies the ECB Junior/Senior Writing requirement. This course also fulfills the Pre-1830 requirement for English concentrators. Cost:2 WL:1
(Flint)
Section 002. Neoclassicism and Romanticism. This course will examine two "period styles" by focusing on two poets-Pope and (probably) Shelley-and three novelists-Jane Austen and Charlotte and Emily Brontë. We will read a little criticism from each "school" and glance at the art, architecture, and music of each period. There will be two papers assigned (about 5 pages each) and a midterm and a final exam. This course fulfills the Pre-1830 Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1 Cost: 2 (Beauchamp)
Section 003. Literature and Power: The Gothic and the Sublime. This course will propose that studying the gothic and the sublime-two supremely "modern" literary movements that emerge in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries-is a crucial way of exploring the relations between literature and power. We will ask: what is at stake in the emergence of the notion that literature is designed to have certain effects on us-to terrify, to provoke feelings of transcendence, to knock our socks off? What are the relations between literary power and other kinds of power, such as psychological and political power? We will read 1) prose writings on the sublime by Longinus, Addison, Burke, and Kant, 2) poetry by Finch, Pope, Collins, and Wordsworth, and 3) novels by Walpole (The Castle of Otranto), M.G.Lewis ( The Monk), Radcliffe (The Mysteries of Udolpho ) perhaps either Shelley (Frankenstein ) or the Marquis de Sade (Justine ). A Junior/Senior Writing course, this class will require 4 papers of 3-5 pages, substantial amounts of revision, and some informal writing exercises. This course fulfills the Pre-1830 Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1 (Pinch)
372. Studies in Literature, 1830-Present. English
351 recommended. (4). (Excl). May be repeated for a total of 8
credits.
Section 001. Literary Reconstructions: 19th and 20th Century British
Fiction. This course will deal with some post-1950 British
fiction that uses, reconstructs, and models itself on earlier
(mostly nineteenth century) fiction. The earlier fiction will
also be read, as the course focuses on how more recent writers
depend on, alter, and create a continuing and changing tradition through literature. Tentative book list: Angus Wilson's Anglo-Saxon
Attitudes and Dicken's Bleak House; Margaret Drabble's The Millstone or The Waterfall and George Eliot's Middlemarch; John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's
Woman and Hardy's J ude the Obscure; A. S. Byatt's Possession and Meredith's The Egoist, as well
as some specified Victorian poems; Doris Lessing's The Golden
Notebook and D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love. The
list is tentative in that a few of the books may not be available-in
which case, we will substitute another novel by the same author.
The class will proceed through discussion and the entirely interruptible
lecture. Three papers, a mid-term, and a final examination. WL:1
(Gindin)
Section 002. Racial Conflict and American Literature. Although the topic of racial conflict in American literature could encompass any number of issues, this course will examine specifically literature on racial violence produced by black and white authors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Texts for study will include novels/short stories by Mark Twain, George Washington Cable, Thomas Dixon, Charles W. Chesnutt, Pauline E. Hopkins, Kate Chopin, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, and Ann Petry. As we read we will consider, among other things, various definitions of racial violence, the role of gender and class in the invention and/or transformation of stereotypes of victim and victimizer by writers of both races. Requirements: a few short writing assignments (3 pages each), two longer papers (5-7 pages each) and perhaps a final exam. This course fulfills both the New Traditions and American Literature Requirements for English concentrators. WL:1 (Gunning)
Section 003. Madness, Deviance, and Sexuality. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, "madness" has been explained from a variety of different perspectives: psychological, sociological, medical, and legal, to name a few. Yet one idea seems to remain constant in discourses on madness: whether literally or metaphorically, disfunctions of the mind are linked inextricably with disfunctions of the sexual body and of the body politic. In this course, we will explore how literary representations of the interrelationships between madness, deviance and sexuality respond to widespread cultural anxieties about difference and, in turn, how literary texts shape how we think about madness and sanity; deviance and normality; the body and the mind; social disorder and order. In order to contextualize our readings of novels, we will also read a selection of primary and secondary texts that raise questions about: the ways in which definitions of "madness" have been harnessed to definitions of "deviance" in order to police the sexual and social body; the criminalization of madness; the gendering of madness and the sexual politics of mental illness; the institutionalization of "normal" and "deviant" sexualities. Texts may include: Bram Stoker, Dracula; Sigmund Freud, Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria; M. E. Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper; Henry James, The Turn of the Screw; Djuna Barnes, Nightwood; F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night; Toni Morrison, Beloved; D. M. Thomas, The White Hotel (all at Shaman Drum). Course pack at Dollar Bill Copying. Class will be conducted mainly as discussion. Requirements: Mandatory attendence, active class participation, four 1-2 page papers, one longer paper (in draft and revision sequence), and a final exam. WL:1 Cost:3 (S. Robinson)
Section 004. From the expression of "If you've ever seen one redwood, you've seen them all" to that of the Greenpeace activist, issues regarding the spiritual, commercial, and legal value of Nature and nature are debated now as they have been, as both history and literature record. Those favoring Old Testament literalism, scientific testing, manifest destiny and other pursuits of the American Dream contend with romanticists, ecologists, and those who equate the loss of wilderness lands or steps in ecological systems with a loss in spiritual and social consciousness, even a loss of humanity itself. This course will consider both historical and literary treatments of these concerns in the debate. Discussion-based class sessions on early religious and poetic interpretations (course pack), and major works selected from Attwood, Erdrich, Faulkner, Fowles, Hardy, Hurston, Melville, Nash, Thoreau and others. Composition requirements include five (ten ECB) shorter papers, two major essays, final exam. This course fulfills the American Literature Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1 Cost: 3 (DePree)
393. Honors Survey: Eighteenth-Century English Literature.
Admission to the English Honors Program. (3). (Excl).
An intensive survey of English literature from 1660-1798, poetry, drama, and prose. Throughout, we will attend carefully to the
historical contexts in which the works appear. We will also discuss
strategies for writing the Honors essay. Authors will include
Milton, Bunyan, Dryden, Finch, Astell; Swift, Pope, Behn, Haywood, Defoe; Johnson, Cowper, Gray, and Collins. Texts at Shaman Drum, course pack at Liberty St. Kinkos. Three papers and an exam. WL:1
Cost:4 (Krook)
394. Honors Survey: History of Literary Theory. Admission
to the English Honors Program. (3). (Excl).
This will be an introductory survey of major developments in literary theory during the past two centuries, with particular emphasis
on the sweeping changes that have taken place in the past twenty-five
years. Major areas of study will include Romanticism, Modernism, New Criticism, Structuralism and Post-structuralism, Marxism, and Feminism. Throughout the course we will be using various branches
of literary theory to help us answer basic questions about what
and why we read, questions like: What is a literary text? Who
or what is an author? In what ways are texts embedded in society
and politics? What is the proper relationship between literature
and criticism/interpretation? Is there a difference between literature
and propaganda? Are male readers/writers different from female
readers/writers? On what principles was our literary canon established, and should it be revised? Should criticism have a social agenda?
Mix of lecture/discussion, but with a strong emphasis on student
participation. Three short papers, and a final project. WL:1 Cost:5
(Kucich)
401/GNE 481/Rel. 481. The
English Bible: Its Literary Aspects and Influences, I. (3).
(HU).
The Bible is a book, a text; it is also a collection of texts
of the most astonishing variety and range. Our emphasis this term
will be on that second characteristic. We will not try to read
all the works there collected, but will select examples from the
historical books (Torah) the Prophets, and the Writings from the
Gospels, Letters, and the Apocalypse. Our first task will be to
try to understand these works both in terms of form and content, and then in terms of the circumstances which gave rise to and shaped them. We will also study how the Bible came to have the
form as a whole that it does now, and consider its transmission, both as text, and, more widely, as cultural influence. Students
will be encouraged to study especially the literary influence
of the Bible in authors of interest to them. Exactly which books
of the Bible are read will be determined in part by class need:
we shall surely touch on Genesis, Exodus, Job, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastics, Isaiah, Hosea, one gospel, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistle to the Romans, and the Apocalypse. There will be, in all likelihood, three essays of moderate length, a midterm, and a final. Class attendance and lively participation in discussion
will be essential. This course fulfills the Pre-1600 Requirement
for English concentrators. WL:1 Cost:2 (Williams)
406/Ling. 406. Modern English
Grammar. (3). (Excl).
This course will provide students with a description of the grammar
(especially the syntax) of contemporary English and make them
familiar in detail with-and understand for themselves-one of the
finest manuals: Greenbaum's A Student's Grammar of the English
Language. Heavy emphasis will be placed on exercises-on 'doing
grammar'-and on classroom discussion. The exercises are given
in the Greenbaum textbook, but others may be added as required.
In addition, there will be constant cross-referral between the
textbook and the Student's Grammar. The course will conclude
by applying this knowledge of grammar to stylistic analyses of
different types of speech and writing, including literary texts.
Students will be expected to undertake regular reading and exercise
assignments between classes, not to be absent, and to participate
regularly in classroom discussion. WL: 1 (Kirk)
411. Art of the Film. (3). (HU). May be
repeated for credit with department permission.
Section 001. Latin American Cinema. We will undertake a close
study of Latin American Cinema from the early 1960s to the present.
We will study the development of third world cinema in both theory
and practice (trying to understand concepts like the aesthetics
of hunger, third cinema, and imperfect cinema); we will try to
understand the function of art and artists in both dependent and revolutionary societies; and we will look closely at each individual
film. We will view both documentaries and fiction films from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Cuba. The course will be
a combination of lecture and discussion (both large group and small group), and the emphasis will be upon the latter. Students
will keep journals on the films. Final project, but no exams.
This course fulfills the New Traditions Requirement for English
concentrators. WL:1 Cost:2 (Alexander)
412/Film-Video 412. Major
Directors. (3). (HU). May be repeated for credit
with department permission.
Section 001. DeSica and Fellini. We will make a careful analytical
study of major films spanning the careers of these complementary
yet contrasting Italian masters. The course will emphasize the
cinematic "languages" and the dramatic themes of these
directors, the relationship between what they say and how they
say it, their styles, their content, and their contexts. I will
post an exact schedule of films outside my office (2627 Haven
Hall) before the beginning of the Winter Term. There will be one
film per week, two lecture classes (1 1/2 hours each), and mandatory
small discussion groups scheduled at your convenience. English/Film-Video
412 may be repeated if content is different form a previous election; there are no prerequisites. Nevertheless, the course is not "An
Introduction to the Movies." Previous work in film history, theory, mechanics, critical analysis, and aesthetics couldn't
hurt. Should film study be new to you, do not feel insecure. You
will not be alone, and the course's reading will give you a solid
foundation. I will also be happy to recommend preparatory reading
before you leave in December, 1991; come see me this term. An
obligatory lab fee, cheaper 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
(Giannetti's Understanding Movies or an alternate text
if that is old news to you) and rigorous writing. Two 2-page papers;
two 5-page papers; final exam; no "Incompletes" except
under catastrophic circumstances. Those who do not care about the quality of their critical prose will find no place to hide.
Anyone who uses "media" with a singular verb flunks.
WL:1 Cost:2 (Bauland)
Section 002. The Films of Max Ophuls and Josef von Sternberg. Ophuls and von Sternberg are directors whose importance in film history has become increasingly evident in recent years. They share both an "emigre" sensibility (though von Sternberg's was manufactured), and fundamental aesthetic principles. These aesthetics, often called "baroque," are deployed to a common end in both directors' work-the representation of women, both powerful and victimized. While von Sternberg focussed on creating a single female icon, Marlene Dietrich (five of whose films with von Sternberg will be screened), Ophuls used stars from many countries to embody his complex vision of femininity. In studying Ophuls' and von Sternberg's stylistics, we will develop a vocabulary for the discussion of cinematic form and its ideological function. Thus, we will refer to basic texts on film style and history (such as Bordwell and Thompson's Film Art), as well as to more advanced theories of authorship derived from psychoanalysis, feminist criticism, semiotics, and the history of art. Films screened will include Ophuls' La Signora di Tutti, The Exile, Letter from an Unknown Woman, Madame de, and Lola Montes, and von Sternberg's Docks of New York, Der blaue Engel, Morocco, Blonde Venus, The Devil is a Woman, and The Scarlet Empress. Lubitsch's The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg or von Stroheim's Merry Go Round will also be included. Students will write at least two 8-10 page papers, take a midterm and a final exam. Some background in cinema or literary criticism is recommended, although students may also acquire the necessary writing and critical skills by working hard during the course of the semester. WL:1 (White)
413/Film-Video 413. Film
Genres and Types. (3). (HU). May be repeated for
credit with department permission.
Section 001. Film Genres and Types-Hollywood Comedy and the
Reflection of Reality. This course is part of the Comedy Semester.
Film comedies rarely win Academy Awards, or any awards for that
matter, yet comedy is arguably the thing that Hollywood has consistently
done best throughout its history. We often brand comedy "escapist"
because it inescapably seems less serious than serious drama, providing us instead with a relief from the tensions of daily
life. Yet Hollywood comedy often offers more insightful glimpses
into quotidian existence than drama, providing sharp observation
of contemporary mores and concerns. Where, for example, the melodramas
of the 1920s were frequently played against settings entirely
created within the big film studios, slapstick comedy literally
took to the streets, on occasion opportunistically taking advantage
of actual events like fires and street races. From the social
success comedies of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold
Lloyd in the 1920s through the gender-bending comedies of Blake
Edwards in the 1980s, Hollywood comedy has provided a brightly
burnished reflection of American life for over eight decades.
That reflection and its significance for American culture will
be the subject matter of this course. Hollywood comedy is simply
too rich and varied to be contained by one course in one semester.
So, rather than attempt to convey the full breadth and depth of
Hollywood comedy, this course will provide a chronological survey
of some of the most striking achievements, works that represent
key moments in the development of Hollywood comedy. To establish
a continuity across such a wide range of material, there will
be a focus on the work of a number of comic artists-Chaplin, Ernst
Lubitsch, Frank Capra, Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder and Blake
Edwards-which will enable us to trace out crosscurrents and developments.
Films by Howard Hawks, Jerry Lewis, Woody Allen and Michael Shulz
will also be shown. Finally, there will be some reading in comic theory-Herni Bergson, Northrop Frye, Suzanne Langer, and others-in
order to bring some general thinking about comedy to bear on the
particularity of Hollywood. There will be two required film screenings
week. Frequent written analyses of the films with a close attention
to visual style and an endterm exam will be required. WL:1 (Paul)
417. Senior Seminar. Senior concentrator
in English. May not be repeated for credit. (4). (Excl).
NOTE: English 417 should be elected by Senior English concentrators
only. Others by permission of instructor only. All sections
of English 417 fulfill the Junior/Senior Writing requirement.
Please add the ECB modification at CRISP.
Section 001. Contemporary Poetry. This course will explore a few of the trends and possibilities within poetics today. It is primarily a reading and writing course. Each week we'll read either a volume of contemporary poetry or selections from an anthology. Our readings will focus on both meaning and the ways in which meanings are made. In other words, we will consider the formal aspects of poetry as well as the poems' content. You will be asked to write weekly one to two-page papers on the assigned reading. Each week I will assign three students as discussion leaders for the following week's class. These students will meet outside of class to plan the discussion. You can expect to guide the class discussion at least twice during the term. Grades will be based on attendance and contributions to discussions; your leadership of assigned discussions; attendance at assigned poetry readings; and the twelve short papers. WL:1 Cost:5 (Fulton)
Section 002. The Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert
Lowell. In this class we will study the work of two of America's
most honored and influential mid-century poets, learning something
in addition about the relationship between them, since they were
friends and literary associates. Our texts will be: Elizabeth
Bishop, The Complete Poems, Elizabeth Bishop, The
Collected Prose, David Kalstone, On Becoming a Poet,
Robert Lowell, Selected Poems, Lloyd Schwartz & Sybil
P. Estess, Elizabeth Bishop & Her Art, and Strunk
& White, The Elements of Style. We shall approach the poetry from several angles: the relationship between poetry
and biography; the role of poetic form; the question of literary
influence. On the whole, though, we'll let Bishop and Lowell speak
to us, as living presences, through their poetry; and with any
kind of luck, by the end of the term we'll feel that we know them
well. This is a Junior/Senior Writing course. Ten 2-page papers
and two 5-page papers will be required, in addition to a final
exam. One goal of the class is for students to master the art
of revision, as papers will regularly be rewritten before being
given a final grade. In addition to Strunk and White's Elements
of Style, a Paper-writing Style Sheet will be used as a guide
to grammar, usage, punctuation, etc. This class will also use
computer conferencing (Confer) the University's MTS message system.
By signing on, everyone in the class will be able to pose questions, bring up ideas, and have both the professor and other students
respond. NOTE: AS THIS CLASS MEETS AT EIGHT IN THE MORNING IN
WINTER, AND AS REGULAR ATTENDANCE IS REQUIRED, CONSIDER CAREFULLY
WHETHER YOU ARE ENOUGH OF A MORNING PERSON TO HANDLE IT!! This
course fulfills the American Literature Requirement for English
concentrators. WL:1 Cost:3 (Tillinghast)
Section 003. Fitzgerald and Hemingway. A careful reading, discussion, and critical analysis of selected short stories and major novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Works
such as The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, Tender is the
Night, A Farewell to Arms, The Last Tycoon, and A Moveable
Feast among others will be the subject and focus of the seminar.
Class sessions will be primarily discussions of the texts, the
critical reception, and close textual readings. Class members
will lead discussions of individual works, initiate research topics
for papers, and write two papers (one on Fitzgerald and one on
Hemingway). Some time will be spent on the social and cultural
background of the twenties and thirties that helped to shape and identify a new style and approach to American fiction. Regular
attendance and participation in the seminar spirit are expected;
a final exam is probable to pull things together as an overview
of the writers and their works. This course fulfills the American
Literature Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1 Cost:2
(Eby)
Section 005. Fiction into Film. This course will compare narrative texts with film adaptations and discuss how each medium shapes and determines what can be done in telling a story. No technical knowledge of film is required, but attendance at the showing of the films and discussions of texts and films is crucial. In order to allow time for viewing the films, the class will meet four hours a week and may occasionally require another hour on one of the days. There will be approximately six short papers and one slightly longer paper and a final exam. Films and corresponding written texts will be chosen from the following: Beauty and the Beast, The Company of Wolves, Rashomon, Apocalypse Now, A Passage to India, Oliver Twist, A Clockwork Orange, The Grapes of Wrath, The Color Purple, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Women in Love, Kiss of the Spiderwoman. WL:1 Cost:4 (Howes)
Section 006. Current Works and Theories in Asian American Literature. In this section of English 417, students will be reading widely in Asian/Pacific American fiction, drama, poetry, and essay, mainly of the recent fifteen years, and in criticism of that literature. Authors to be read-American writers of Chinese, Filipino, South Asian, Japanese, and Korean descent viewed in their American historical contexts and as interpreters of such contexts-include Meena Alexander, Frank Chin, Jessica Hagedorn, Velina Hasu Houston, David Henry Hwang, Maxine Hong Kingston, Darrell H. Y. Lum, Bharati Mukherjee, David Mura, Cathy Song, and Amy Tan. These authors and their full-length texts will be joined by others represented in anthologies and possibly in a course pack of literary works and criticism. A student's prior study of Asian/Pacific American literature would be helpful but is not a prerequisite. Literary history will be introduced and discussed where needed, particularly in taking published criticisms informed by knowledge of Asian American literary history and contexts and comparing them against ones that are not. Critical practices, theories, and issues to be examined range from problems that seem most basic (e.g., confusion of protagonist, narrator, or speaker for the author) to the most sweeping (e.g., "minority discourse," or the relations between ethnic literary studies and the universities in which the studies are usually conducted, and therefore implications about what criticism is written, how, and why). A vital part of the course, two papers of 5 pages each plus a final paper of 7-10 pages are required. To prepare for finishing these works of criticism, preliminary writing exercises will also be assigned and critiqued. In these papers every student will have the opportunity to focus-and bring into further discussion-a topic of the student's choice within the broad range of authors, literary works, and criticisms read and discussed. This course fulfills both the New Traditions and American Literature Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1 Cost: 5 (Sumida)
Section 007. Hollywood and The Visual Culture. In this course we shall discuss texts that consider the consequences of the rise to dominance of visual media like movies and television. Writers have dramatized/documented the way that Hollywood as a site of mass culture has attracted and worked upon representative "actors" in an American Dream. Conversely, Hollywood has sent into the world images, icons, and stories that have shaped twentieth century culture in profound ways. In order to better understand the dynamics of this cultural transformation, and the varieties of literary responses to it, we shall begin by discussing Susan Sontag's On Photography and Nathaniel West's The Day of the Locust, and proceed to other texts, in whole or in part, by Joan Didion, James Balwin, Neil Postman, David Thomson, Mark Crispin Miller, Robert Stone, and Manuel Puig, as well as readings from anthologies and a significant number of poems on the topic. We shall also study a couple of films, such as The Purple Rose of Cairo and The King of Comedy, pertinent to our theme. Each student will deliver a brief oral report, keep a reading journal, and write several papers. This course fulfills the American Literature Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1 Cost:3 (Goldstein)
Section 008. How To Become a Victim of Poetry. The seminar will consider how poetry influences us, and shapes the ways in which we see the world and how we talk and write about it. We will focus on how-and why-some poems have special appeal. The discussion will be grounded in the experience of one poet, myself, reading other poets. We will look at some of the poems selected by William Butler Yeats for his 1936 edition of the Oxford Book of Modern Verse. This very personal anthology, which reflected Yeats' own response to poetry, influenced many other English-language poets (e.g., William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson) and some poets writing in different languages (e.g., Lorca, Cisneros, Tagore, Rilke, Ahkmatova). All of them, in turn, have affected our view of poetry. This will lead into a discussion of the appeal of particular and universal qualities in poetry. We will talk about issues of language, place, and community. We will look at the development of contemporary poetry in communities sharing common experiences, such as women, and people of African heritage, and also those using particular languages, especially local languages (as distinct from more universal literary languages). Course requirements include short weekly papers and other in-class assignments. WL:1 Cost:(Goodison)
Section 009. Literary Approaches to the Bible. In this course, we will read selections from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the New Testament alongside critical literature detailing various theoretical approaches to reading the bible. Issues we will discuss will include how biblical narrators tell their stories; how they represent gender; whether and how the New Testament is linked to the Hebrew Bible; what kind of cultural authority the Bible has, and why. No prior knowledge of the Bible is required. Course requirements include completing primary and secondary reading assignments, giving oral reports in class, and writing a term paper of about 20 pages. Texts at Shaman Drum, course pack at Kinko's. This course fulfills the Pre-1600 Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1 Cost:3 (Krook)
Section 010. Writing Beyond the Zero. This course would be especially useful to students considering graduate school in the humanities and for all those who hope to continue writing after college. Our goal will be to write the academic essay beyond its traditional limits of audience, content, and form. If your work is already extraordinary, so much the better. If it has a long way to go, you too will find good company here. The class will be structured in part through a series of mini-courses on such subjects as rhetoric (how can contemporary writers make use of a history of persuasiveness?), library research (what is "total bibliographic control"?), research beyond the academy (how does one request material under the Freedom of Information Act?), style and self-editing (what do current manuals advise? how is the nature of style arbitrated today?), and the writer's marketplace (where and how do academics and others publish their non-fictional writing?). Readings will be devoted to exceptional stylists, from Edmund Wilson to Deleuze and Guattari. Much of what we read, especially in the latter part of the course, will be determined by class interests. Students will work on a variety of shorter writing exercises. Also, each student will choose, very early in the term, a substantial (15-20 page) project in research and writing. Generally, it will be on some aspect of cultural history. (The class as a whole may adopt an overall theme, "A History of Everyday Things," for example.) Projects will go through several drafts and reviews throughout the semester. The goal of all projects will be publication in a suitable journal, magazine, or other vehicle. Courses that take students beyond freshman composition, such as English 225, 325, or 425, would provide helpful experience, but are not strictly prerequisites for this class. WL:1 Cost:2 (Leon)
Section 011. Women Writers of Africa and the Diaspora. The course aims to discover and demonstrate the connections and continuities among selected women writers of Africa and the Diaspora within a critical framework that draws upon indigneous socio-political, cultural and theoretical models and formations. With an insistence on close reading within the context of cultural criticism, we will examine, among other issues, the interpenetration of orality and written discourse, the dismantling of authorized structures, the articulation and interrogation of the constructs of race and gender. Requirements include class participation, oral presentations, short papers and one research paper. Authors will include Bessie Head, Ama Ata Aidoo, Paule Marshall, Maryse Conde, Simone Schwarz-Bart and Jamaica Kincaid. This course fulfills the New Traditions Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1 Cost:3 (Gregg)
Section 012. Major Novels of William Faulkner : This course will focus on a study of the background, genesis, and composition of probably four novels, culminating in a close reading of the texts and discussion and the writing of papers developing from this whole process. The novels will probably include Light in August, The Sound and the Fury, Hamlet, Go Down, Moses. This course will treat the backgrounds and genesis of Faulkner's work and then go on to a close reading of the novels mentioned above. Classes will involve both lecture and discussion, and the written work will include two papers and a final examination. Each student will present one of the papers in class. This course fulfills the American Literature Requirement for English concentrators. Cost:1 WL:1 (Blotner)
Section 013. Literature of the Holocaust. This course will consider how writers have confronted the Holocaust in fiction and poetry. We will read translations of works written by Holocaust survivors and others in Hebrew, Yiddish, French, German, and Polish as well as English, and consider some of the literary criticism that has emerged concerning this topic. (All works will be read in English translation; there are no language requirements for this course.) The texts we will read encourage an examination of symbolic language and the encounter between the artistic imagination and historical experience. They invite questions about the cultural significance of national and linguistic borders, the nature of exile, public and private memory and mourning. Among the authors to be read are: Tadeusz Borowski, Paul Celan, Yankev Glatshteyn, Ilona Karmel, Primo Levi, Nelly Sachs, Avrom Sutskever, Elie Wiesel. Other authors as well as a number of films will also be considered. Course requirements include active (and hopefully engaged) participation in classroom discussions, periodic short (2-3pp.) essays, a longer paper that may emerge from these shorter ones, and a final. This course fulfills the New Traditions Requirement for English concentrators. This course was not listed in the time schedule but will meet Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:30-12:00. WL:1 (Norich)
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. 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, finally, 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 Wait List at CRISP and bring a manuscript to
class the first evening. A list of those admitted will be posted
shortly thereafter. (Ezekiel)
Section 002. 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 who wish to be in the class should place their name on the Wait Litst at CRISP and bring a manuscript to class the first evening. A list of those accepted will be posted before the next class meeting. WL:1 Cost:1 (Baxter)
427. Playwriting. Permission of instructor.
(3). (Excl). May be repeated for credit.
Section 001. An intensive seminar in the art of Adaptation.
We will limit ourselves to the virtually unlimited resources of
fictional and non-fictional material which has been (or might
be) brought to the stage, exploring the various strategies, esthetic
ideologies, and practical concerns of the professional adaptor.
Texts we will consider include The Grapes of Wrath (and the subsequent Steppenwolf Theater production), The Book of
Job (and JB), The Recruiting Officer (and last year's
Broadway Tony nominee Our Country's Good), An Enemy
of the People (Ibsen's original & Miller's update), The
Life and Times of Harvey Milk (and Execution of Justice ), and the instructor's own adaptation of Born Guilty, among
others. Students will propose and outline several adaptations
of their own and continue on to revise at least one hour-long
adaptation based on source material of their own choosing. The
course is open to any student who has taken Playwriting 227 or
an intensive screenwriting course and is well versed in the fundamentals
of dramatic structure. To enroll, sign up on waitlist at CRISP
and come to the first day of class with an original play or screenplay
to submit during interview. WL:1 Cost:2 (Roth)
428. Senior Writing Tutorial. English
223, 323, and 423/429 or equivalent (3). (Excl).
Section 001. This course is a combination writing workshop/thesis
tutorial for undergraduate students who are in their last year
at Michigan, have taken the 200-,300-, and 400-level writing workshops, and have been accepted into the Creative Writing Program. Students
will complete a major manuscript of fiction or poetry. Supervised
reading and writing assignments will also form a part of the curriculum.
Regular tutorial meetings between students and faculty will take
place: workshops in fiction and/or poetry might be arranged. The
course is designed to afford students and faculty the greatest
flexibility and latitude in devising the most beneficial working
arrangements, given the particular needs of students taking the
course that term. WL:1 Cost:1 (Ezekiel)
429. The Writing of Poetry. Written permission
of instructor is required. (3). (Excl). May be repeated for credit.
Section 001. This course is a poetry-writing workshop. Students
will circulate and discuss their poems written during the term, as well as analyze a selection of poetry and criticism by eminent
contemporary poets. We shall use an anthology of recent poetry
as our central text. Students should be prepared to devote considerable
time to composition and revision, and to extensive commentary
on their fellow students' writing. Each student will keep a journal
of readings, ruminations, and materials for poems. Some experience
in creative writing courses is desirable, though not essential.
Permission of the instructor is required. Leave a sample manuscript
of 3-5 pages in Professor Goldstein's mailbox in the English Department
office during the week before the first day of class, or bring
a manuscript to the first class. A class list will be posted on the door of 1617 Haven Hall after the first day of class. WL:1
Cost:2 (Goldstein)
430. The Rise of the Novel. (3). (Excl).
As its name implies, the novel as a genre defines itself in terms
of its newness. Both Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding confessed that they had invented a "new species" or "new
province" of writing. One of the central questions that this
course will seek to answer is how and why did writers of prose
fiction in the eighteenth century make their work seem new? Since
a literary work, even one professing to be new, does not exist
in an informational vacuum we will want to establish the context
of the novel's novelty. What is unique and what is borrowed in the works of eighteenth-century novelists? Where do influence
and inspiration meet? How does tradition or expectation produce
innovation? Examining writers from Aphra Behn and Daniel Defoe
to Laurence Sterne and Mary Shelley we will, over the course of the term, raise these and other issues in both lecture and discussion
format. Requirements will include occasional informal assignments, two formal essays and a final exam. Committed and informed participation
in discussion periods will be expected of all students. This course
fulfills the Pre-1830 Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1
Cost:2 (Flint)
431. The English Novel from Dickens to Conrad. (3).
(Excl).
The Victorian Novel is the site for a number of complex investigations
of social, political, and sexual issues-this list is, of course, by no means exhaustive-that still resonate profoundly in our own
time. These investigations are also lengthy: come to this class
prepared to do a lot of reading, to get wrapped up in
novels that are as big as their subjects. Texts for the course
will include Charlotte Brontë, Villette; Charles Dickens, Bleak House; George Eliot, Middlemarch; Thomas
Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles; George Gissing, The
Odd Women; Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm;
R. L. Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer. Course
requirements will include three essays (two five-page papers and a final, more substantial essay that's about ten pages long).
There will be a mid-term and a final exam. Cost:2 WL: 1 (Whittier-Ferguson).
433. The Modern Novel. (3). (Excl).
This course will examine developments in English fiction from the turn of the century to 1962. We will explore the ways in which the twentieth-century novel, rather than being driven by plot, attempts to trace, in Joyce's words, "the curve of an emotion."
Virginia Woolf tells us that "human nature changed"
in the first decade of the 1900s. Certainly the way novelists
constructed human nature changed dramatically. We will also discuss
issues that might be broadly grouped under the heading "gender":
how do men and women in our century respond to or initiate the
radical redefinitions of sex roles that occur during our century?
Or are those "radical redefinitions" more rhetorical than substantive? Readings will include works by Bennett, The
Old Wive's Tale; Ford, The Good Soldier; Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Lawrence, Women
in Love; Woolf, To the Lighthouse; Stein, Three
Lives; Lowry, Under the Volcano; Lessing, The
Golden Notebook. Course requirements will include three essays
(two five-page papers and a final, more substantial essay that's
about ten pages long). There will be a mid-term and a final exam.
Cost:2 WL: 1 (Whittier-Ferguson).
441. Contemporary Poetry. (3). (Excl).
This course will sample American poetry since 1945, including
at least twelve of the following: Lowell, Bishop, Berryman, Roethke, J. Wright, Merrill, Rich, Walcott, Ashbery, Kinnell, Merwin, Pinsky, Gluck, Fulton, and Alexander. The class will focus on questions
of language, influence, and development. We will define these
poets against their Modern predecessors, and ask whether such
disparate individuals share any characteristics as Postmoderns
(is there such a thing as Postmodern American poetry?). I hope
for a mixture of lecture and discussion, of close reading and broad argument. Requirements: 3 papers (two short and one long), midterm, final. This course fulfills the American Literature Requirement
for English concentrators. WL:1 Cost: 5 (Terada)
444/Theatre 322. History of Theatre II. (3).
(HU).
See Theatre and Drama 322.
(Cardullo)
448. Contemporary Drama.
(3). (Excl).
THEATRE OF THE ABSURD. This course is part of the Comedy Semester.
This course will investigate the philosophical and especially the dramatic conditions that gave rise to the emergence of what
has been called "the theatre of the absurd" in Western
Europe after the Second World War. In studying the shape of this
tradition in playwrights like Ionesco, Beckett, and Pinter, we
will consider the origins of this style in the work of earlier
practitioners such as Jarry, Apollinaire, and Tristan Tzara. The
course will also discuss the way in which "absurdity"
has been transplanted into the American theatre by looking at the plays of Albee, Kopit, and Fornes. Course requirements include
two papers and a final exam. WL:1 Cost:3 (Brater)
449/Theatre 423. American Theatre and Drama. (3).
(HU).
See Theatre and Drama 423.
(Ferran)
450. Medieval Drama. (3).
(Excl).
This course will explore the origins of medieval and renaissance
drama, the development of the major medieval dramatic forms (with
some anticipation of renaissance forms), and various theories
about the social and religious functions of medieval drama. Class
time will be devoted primarily to lectures, discussion of readings, and student reports; but we will also listen to and watch excellent
modern productions of plays, seeking to understand the works in
performance and not just the printed texts. This is an advanced
course and assumes a prior knowledge of Middle English literature
and language. Requirements: one long (20 pp) or two short (10
pp) research papers, final exam, oral report, active participation
in class activities. This course fulfills the Pre-1600 Requirement
for English concentrators. WL:1 Cost: 3 (Tinkle)
459. English Neoclassical Literature. (3).
(Excl).
This course in later eighteenth century English literature will
be centered on the most eminent writer of the age, Samuel Johnson, and his friends. He was preeminent in a group of artists, actors, and authors, both men and women, who excelled individually and who shone as a group, making London in the mid- and late- eighteenth
century brilliant with their works and wit. Our approach will
be primarily but by no means exclusively biographical, using Boswell's Life of Johnson as a handbook as we follow the lives
and work of Johnson, Boswell, Reynolds, Goldsmith, Burke, Fanny
Burney, Hester Thrale, Hannah More, David Garrick, and others
whose lives and work were powerfully affected by Johnson. This
course offers students the opportunity to study a few authors
in depth, to live familiarly in 18th century London, to examine
genres (biography, travel literature, periodical journalism, legicography, history) often neglected in literature courses, and to pursue
special interests through study of members of Johnson's circle
(a few examples: History (Burke and Gibbon); Aesthetics (Burke
and Reynolds); the Theatre (Garrick and Goldsmith); the Novel
(Goldsmith, Burney); the Status of Women Writers (Burney, Thrale, More, etc.). There will be a final examination, one common paper, and special projects tailored to the interests of individual members
of the class. This course fulfills the Pre-1830 Requirement for
English concentrators. WL:1 (Cloyd)
465/MARC 465. Chaucer: The
Canterbury Tales. (3). (Excl).
We will read most of The Canterbury Tales. Class time
will be devoted largely to discussion of these texts, which we
will of course read in Chaucer's Middle English. There will be
a final examination at the scheduled time. In addition there will
be two hour exams, or two short papers, or some combination of the two. The Canterbury Tales are, among other things, a dramatic anthology of various literary types. So, as an anthology, they point quite precisely out from Chaucer into late medieval
literature, and as drama they also point to the social life of
14th century England. It will be an important goal of the course
to keep these two kinds of reference actively in mind. This course
fulfills the Pre-1600 Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1
(Lenaghan)
470. Early American Literature: Key Texts. (3).
(Excl).
This course will trace writings from Columbus' first landing
in North America through the American Revolution, as depicted
by whites, blacks, native americans, hispanics, women and men.
In focusing on Puritan ideas of faith and reason, love of God, the individual and in the community, freedom of conscience, etc., we will be looking not only at what these specific works
offered to their own era, but the ways in which these ideas are
carried on and converted in the decades ahead. What, for instance, is the relationship of religion and revolution? How does the patriarchal
form of divine right (in terms of both an earthly and heavenly
king) survive a transfer of authority from fathers to sons, from
monarchy to democracy? What role do women, as individuals and as a marginalized group, play in the move from a colonial to a
revolutionary (and ultimately to a romantic) age? There will be
two substantial papers, a midterm and a final. This course fulfills
both the Pre-1830 and American Literature Requirements for English
concentrators. WL:1 Cost:3 (Barnes)
473. Topics in American Literature. (3).
(Excl).
Chicano Literature. This discussion course will analyze the
Chicano experience in the United States through novels, short
fiction, plays and poems (in English) written by Mexican-Americans.
Often considered outside "mainstream" American literature, Chicano literary writings are a valid and exciting part of this
country's literature, reflecting the rich historical and cultural
experiences of America's fastest growing minority group. Works
will be enjoyed and discussed for their literary merit as well
as for their insights into the sociological, cultural and political
realities of Chicano life, issues which frequently serve as dominant
literary themes. Emphasis will be on works published from the
1960s to the present. As a discussion course, class attendance
and participation are crucial. Students of all ethnic backgrounds
are encouraged to enroll; ideally, the class can serve as a forum
for cross-cultural exchange. Required readings will include a
short course pack and 8-9 paperback books. Students will take
a mid-term, a final examination, and will write a 10-15 page paper.
This course fulfills both the New Traditions and American Literature
Requirements for English concentrators. WL:1 (Zimmerman)
477/CAAS 475. Early Afro-American
Literature. Permission of instructor. (3). (Excl).
Often we think of "early" African-American literature
as the poetry of Phillis Wheatley and the slave narratives of
Olaudah Equiano, William Wells Brown, Frederick Douglass and Harriet
Jacobs. However, while this course will draw on pre-Civil War
poetry and prose produced by the slave experience, it will also
pay great attention to the spiritual autobiographies, novels, essays, diaries, and travel literature produced by free blacks
(John Marrant, Maria Stewart, Jarena Lee, Frank Webb, Mary Seacole, Charlotte Forten, Martin Delany, and Harriet Wilson, to name a
few). Combined with the more familiar slave narratives, these
texts provide complex and often problematic examples of how gender, religion, class, culture, and regional difference, in addition
to issues of slavery and freedom, shaped early black literature.
Requirements: class participation, 2 papers, and a final exam.
This course fulfills both the New Traditions and American Literature
Requirements for English concentrators. WL:1 (Gunning)
479. Topics in Afro-American Literature. English
274 and/or 320 strongly recommended. (3). (Excl). May be repeated
for a total of 6 credits.
The Slave's Story: History, Memory, Imagination. For more than a century, in magazines and in separately published books, former slaves told a common story of captivity and forced labor.
The narrators did, nonetheless, strike a variety of notes-sorrow, despair, intrigue, triumph. To this day these earliest African
American auto-biographies lay claim to the nation's collective
imagination; the serious student of African American literature
must be conversant with this tradition. We will read many of the
original narratives, from Briton Hammon to Harriet Jacobs, as
well as fictional reimaginings from Wells Brown's "Clotel"
to Sherley Ann Williams' "Meditations on History." Readings
from historical and theoretical sources will also be included.
At least one previous course in African American literature is
strongly recommended. Written requirements: a minimum of three
papers and one final examination. This course fulfills both the
New Traditions and American Literature Requirements for English
concentrators. WL:1 Cost: 2 (Zafar)
482. Studies in Individual Authors. (3).
(Excl). May be repeated for credit with department permission.
Section 001. Yeats and Joyce. This course proposes a study
of the entire body of lyric poetry of William Butler Yeats and three volumes of fiction by James Joyce: Dubliners; A Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man; Ulysses. (Students prepared
to and wishing to make a reading of Finnegan's Wake will
be assisted in that splendid and dubious prospect by the instructor, by special arrangement). The course will be conducted by two lectures
and one discussion a week. There will be two hour exams, two not
terribly long papers (one on each author), a final examination.
There will probably be occasional quizzes, of no particular account, to provide acquaintance with the more engaged of the participants.
I have no idea of costs of books since I don't know what the copyright
commands these days. But students will be expected to have ready
access to The Collected Poems of Yeats and to any (the
cheapest possible) editions of Joyce's three fictions. Lectures
will be idiosyncratic and eclectic in approach, as they aim to
make more available and comprehensible the works studied. Reference
to realities in Ireland will be made more frequently than is perhaps
usual in such courses, to demonstrate the perfectly obvious point that the universality of these great authors is grounded in Irish
ways. Yeats will not be made to bear the sins of English colonialism
in Ireland (though some of his more outre pretensions will be
treated wryly). Joyce will not be approached as a nationalist
manque, nor as a would-be democrat, because he wasn't. WL:1 (McNamara)
Section 002. The Poetry of George Herbert. We shall read through almost all of Herbert's English poetry together. Our questions will be whether we can make sense of it; whether we can start to understand the process of learning itself, that is the way in which a reader gradually becomes acculturated to an author. In this sense the direction will be from practice towards theory. Each student will be asked to give two or more presentations on particular poems; each graduate student will in addition be asked to write an analytic review of one of the major critical books in the field. There will be a term paper and an exam. This course fulfills the Pre-1830 Requirement for English concentrators. WL:1 (White)
Section 003. The Works of William Saroyan. For Winter Term, 1992, this course is jointly offered with Armenian Studies 280. (Calonne)
483. Great Works of Literature. (1). (HU). May be repeated for credit with department permission.
Section 001. The American Comic Novel. This course is part of the Comedy Semester. This mini-course will involve a series of lectures on seven or eight novels central to the comic tradition in the United States. Each week, a different lecturer will introduce and lead discussion on a novel representing some aspect of comedy. Likely authors include the following: Twain, Pynchon, Faulkner, Max Apple, Peter DeVries. Final exam and one short paper. Grades determined on basis of class participation and the two written requirements. Regular attendance mandatory. WL:1 (Gindin)
Section 002. Four Late Comedies and Romances of Shakespeare. This course is part of the Comedy Semester. When Shakespeare's friends, his fellow actors and others associated with him in theatre, gathered together his plays after his death and published them in the book called the First Folio (1623) they divided them into three groups: Tragedies, Histories, Comedies. Among the Comedies are four plays to which this course will devote special attention: All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest. What is it about these plays that they may appropriately be called Comedies? The course proposes to pursue this question by a study of each of the plays singly and as a group. We approach them as late manifestations of Shakespeare's playwrighting and stagecraft; after a preliminary remarking of what seems most characteristic of and essential to earlier comedies by Shakespeare we mean to inquire into these later plays as to how far and in what ways they represent continuation from the earlier practice and what might be the special features of the later plays. The course will view the plays primarily as works for the theatre and will make every effort to take them in that light. Videotape productions will be assigned for viewing, and these will be supplemented by exercises in class designed to bring out the theatrical challenges and opportunities offered by these texts (viewed as scripts). In this way we hope to gain a possession of these comedies and to deepen our sense of the meaning of Comedy. One extended paper will be required for course credit. WL:1 (McNamara)
489/Educ. D 440 (School of Education). Teaching of
English. See School of Education Bulletin. (3). (Excl).
This course, designed for students in the teacher certification
program, provides a mixture of theoretical and practical perspectives
on teaching English in secondary schools. Among the issues considered
will be ways of reading kids and classrooms, ways that assumptions
about the nature of language shape teaching and learning, and ways of evaluating students' performances. Students will observe
teachers in local schools and tutor high school students. Texts
will include: Language and Reflection: An Integrated Approach
to Teaching English and Woman Warrior. Written work
will include a reading and observation journal, a report of a
research project, to be conducted in school, and several short
papers. WL:1 Cost:2 (Gere)
495. Honors Survey: The Twentieth Century. Admission
to the English Honors Program. (3). (Excl).
Section 001. Contexts of Modern Irish Literature. This class
will study the twentieth-century Irish Literary Renaissance more
within the twin contexts of Irish literature and Irish history than within the more usual ones 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, George Bernard Shaw, and Sean O'Casey, as well as less
well known materials by writers like Douglas Hyde, Katherine Tynan, Patrick Pearse, and Flann O'Brien. We will also read some history
and examine both historical documents and items from popular culture.
Written work will include a longer and a shorter paper. WL:1 Cost:4
(Bornstein)
496. Honors Survey: Thesis and Comprehensive Examination.
Admission to the English Honors Program. (3). (Excl).
This course is restricted to students in the English Department's
Honors Program. English 496 is used for the combination of thesis
and comprehensive exam in Honors and all students should attach their ECB modifier to this course at CRISP. WL:1 Cost:none (Gindin)
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