Transfer Student Courses in English (Division 361)

Winter Term, 2000 (January 5 - April 26, 2000)

To see what Transfer Student courses have been added or changed in English this week go to What's New This Week.

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

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

WRITING COURSES:

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

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

INDEPENDENT STUDY:

Independent study in English must be elected under one of the following numbers: 226 (Directed Writing, 1-3 hours), 299 (Directed Reading, 1-3 hours), 426 (Directed Writing, 1-4 hours), 499 (Directed Reading, 1-4 hours). There is a limit to the total hours that may be taken under any one number. Students interested in independent study should obtain an application from the English Department office on the third floor of Angell Hall. Independent study proposals must be approved by a supervising professor and by the Undergraduate Chair of the department. The deadline for Independent Study in the Winter Term 2000 is January 14, 2000.

English 350 & 351

This two-term sequence is designed to give students a principled sense of the range of literary works written in English; the first term will characteristically deal with works produced before the later seventeenth century - to the time of Milton, that is; the second term will begin at that point and proceed to the present. These courses will be open to English concentrators and to non-concentrators alike.

English 370, 371, & 372

Each of these courses will range over the materials of the periods indicated below in one or more of a variety of ways. Some may be multi-generic surveys; some may focus on the development during the period of specific genres; some may be topical, others formal in their principle of organization. All sections will emphasize the development of student skill in writing essays analyzing the materials and evaluating the approaches in question.

Section 005.

Instructor(s): Mbala Nkanga (mbalank@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: No credit granted to those who have completed or are enrolled in RC Hums. 281. (4). (HU).

Credits: (4; 3 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Theatre and Drama 211.005.

Section 003 – An Experience of Black Literatures in the Americas. This course satisfies both the American Literature and New Traditions requirements for English concentrators

Instructor(s): Lem Johnson (eljay@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Senior concentrator in English. May not be repeated for credit. (4). (Excl).

Credits: (4; 3 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Note the plurals involved in this term’s approach to the issue of "Blackness in Human Form" in the lands of the "New World." Our readings during the term will come out of the South and Central America of, say, Brazil (Abdias do Nascimento and Antonio Olinto) and the Panama, Costa Rica, and Uruguay of Cubena, Quince Duncan, and Virginia Brindis de Salas. The Caribbean will be represented by the likes of Martinique's Aime Cesaire (The Tragedy of King Christophe and A Tempest), Cuba's Nicolas Guillen (in poetry) and Alejo Carpentier (The Kingdom of This World). Elsewhere, our Caribbean circuit will pass through the Calypso and Carnival of Earl Lovelace's The Dragon Can't Dance into the Rastafarianism in Roger Mais' Brother Man (1950s), in Orlando Patterson's Children of Sisyphus (1960s) and in Derek Walcott's O Babylon!. This will be in addition to the Jamaica that we find in Louise Bennett's poetry and the Saint Lucia in Derek Walcott's poetry. So too Marys Conde's Guadeloupe and the post-European temptation that "Amurca" represents in Austin Clarke's Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack. To this mix, we will add comparative instances from North America's slave narratives and from W.E.B. Du Bois (Souls of Black Folk). Key readings here will also include poetry (e.g., Countee Cullen's "What Is Africa To Me?" and Robert Hayden's "Middle Passage"), Paule Marshall's short-story revision of Shakespeare's The Tempest ("Brazil"), Ishmael Reed's Japanese by Spring, and James Baldwin's Go Tell It On the Mountain. We will also work with excerpts from periods (1920s-40s) of more or less parallel developments involving the USA's Harlem Renaissance, Negrismo in the Hispanic Americas, and Negritude in the French-speaking Caribbean.

Note: Preceeded by short reports (1-2 pages) for each reading, this Seminar's Final Project will require a 15-page comparative essay on writers from any two areas of the "Black Americas": Brazil & Cuba; North America & Uruguay; Canada & Haiti; Canada & Puerto Rico, etc., etc.

Section 005 – Whitman and Dickinson. This course satisfies the American Literature requirement for English concentrators.

Instructor(s): James McIntosh (jhmci@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Senior concentrator in English. May not be repeated for credit. (4). (Excl).

Credits: (4; 3 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

In this seminar we will read a generous selection of both these major nineteenth-century American poets in an historical and critical context. Since Emerson was an important influence on both Whitman and Dickinson, we'll spend a bit of time with him too. During the first three weeks we'll study poems from the 1855 and 1856 Leaves of Grass. Then, after a class on Emerson, we'll focus on Dickinson during the last three weeks before spring break, especially on her conception of the value of poetry and her struggles with her religious heritage. After the break, we'll return to the later Whitman of "Calamus," "Sea-Drift," and the Civil War poems, before finishing with three more weeks on Dickinson, focusing on her poems of death, pain, consolation, and immortality. Students will be asked to write a short paper on Whitman, a short paper on Dickinson, a longer (10-page) paper on a topic of their own choosing, and bi-weekly response papers.

Section 009 – Conflicts in Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism. Meets with Afroamerican and African Studies 458.006. This course satisfies the New Traditions requirement for English concentrators

Instructor(s): Ifeoma Nwankwo (icn@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Senior concentrator in English. May not be repeated for credit. (4). (Excl).

Credits: (4; 3 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Afroamerican and African Studies 458.006.

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Laurence Goldstein (lgoldste@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course focuses on poetry written in English from 1945 to the present. Some experience of "modern" poetry written in the first decades of this century would be very useful, but is not essential. We shall examine two full careers, those of Elizabeth Bishop and Donald Hall (the Hopwood Lecturer in April), as well as key volumes of the contemporary period such as Robert Lowell's For the Union Dead, Sylvia Plath's Ariel (with Ted Hughes's responsive volume Birthday Letters), Seamus Heaney's Field Work, Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah, Adrienne Rich's Dream of a Common Language and two or more volumes from the 1990s. A coursepack of prose and poetry by other figures will also be included. Two papers, a midterm and a final examination, as well as a reading journal, constitute the course requirements.

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Bert Cardullo (cardullo@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (HU).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Theatre and Drama 423.001.

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Tobin Siebers (tobin@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~tobin/html/E486.html

This will be an introductory survey of the developments in literary theory during the past two centuries with special emphasis on the dramatic changes that have taken place in the past thirty years. Major moments will include romanticism, modernism, new criticism, deconstruction, feminism, and multiculturalism. How has the nature of the literary text changed over time? What types of reading are permissible, when, why, and by whom? Is literature capable of providing insights into life? Or is literature the product of blinding ideologies that seek to control us? Can a text be gendered, and what happens when a reading is cross-gendered? Is a multicultural reading possible, if a reader is monocultural? The course will combine lecture and discussion, but the heaviest emphasis will be on student participation, with one class per week turned over entirely to students. Requirements are weekly short think sheets, two mid-size papers, and ardor.