Marty Patton
All Sections

TBA; dependent on section
English 1000 is a college writing course that focuses on the choices that informed writers make when discovering, developing, and revising academic papers appropriate for the given topic. We offer about 115 sections of English 1000 each semester. For more information see our Introduction to English 1000.

Time: MWF 1-1:50
Description: Linguistics is the scientific study of human language: its structure, its acquisition by children, its history and genetic groupings, and aspects of its use.  This course provides an introduction to the properties of language, and to some major sub-fields into which its study is organized: phonetics and phonology (concerned with sounds), morphology (word structure), syntax, language acquisition, and language variation.

Textbook: Language Files, published by Ohio State University. Cross-lists: Linguistics 1060; Anthropology 1060.

Aliki Barnstone
Section 1

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Charles Marvin
Section 2

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Noah Heringman

Section 3

Time: MWF 11:00-11:50
Description: The idea of "deep time"--the long period predating recorded human history--came into being along with modern geology roughly 200 years ago.  The vastly expanded time scale of the earth's slow changes made possible evolutionary biology and archaeology in the nineteenth century.  In the twentieth century the development of radio-carbon dating and other technologies began to reveal the age of the earth, the history of life, and place of human beings within that history. Today these are three separate time scales, all of them "deep" in relation to history.  In this course we will examine and practice different kinds of science writing that have brought the idea of deep time to life and helped to show how it connects different sciences and connects science to culture.  We will read authors such as Charles Darwin, Annie Dillard, Stephen Jay Gould, Daniel Lord Smail, and Henry David Thoreau in order to explore the emergence of geological, evolutionary, and archaeological time scales and their relationships to each other.

Sarah Heston

Section 4

This class will look at memoirs from the early medieval period to the present as well as some responses to them. Some texts that could be taught for this class are The Life of SS Perpetua and Felicitas (3rd c), Margery Kempe's Life (15th c), the Abbe de Choisy's Transvestite Memoirs (17th c), any number of 18-19th century slave narratives, Kathryn Harrison's The Kiss (20th c), Sue Silverman's I Remember Terror, Father, Because I Remember You (20th c), Michael Ryan's Secret Life (20th c), and Richard Hoffman's Half the House (20th c), a book that resulted in a prosecution of a child molester. This class will also glance at some condemning book reviews with a discussion geared toward asking, what is considered scandalous? what is taboo, and do we just go along with what our culture(s) thinks is wrong? why are women's memoirs more taboo than men's, historically? Students will be expected to write short, guided responses to the primary readings, lead one class discussion of a text and its review, and be given an informal midterm and final on the texts we've read. This will not be a paper-driven class, but a critical thinking-driven discussion class geared toward complicating simple notions of memoir, culture, transgression, and testimonial.

William Kerwin

Section 1

Time: T/Th 11:00-12:15
Description:

English 2000H   Literature and Medicine

Imagining the Boundaries of Medicine

This course uses imaginative literature to complicate the question “What is medicine?”  Clearly medicine involves the body, with all of its biological and chemical processes.  But we will consider the many ways that medical matters are also cultural and narrative matters: illness, health, and medical practices always occur within history, and attempts to make meaning of them look differently from different perspectives. So we will be approaching this project in two major ways.  First, we will look at narratives of  disease with an eye towards how illness is always placed, and how it always has cultural meanings. Epilepsy, alcoholism, AIDS, depression, plague, eating disorders—we will read short stories, novels, and other narrative accounts that help us understand the experience of these and other illnesses within history.  Literature makes vivid how much medicine is a part of society, and how much both disease and healing have cultural as well as scientific aspects.  This is not an attempt to “unmedicalize” these matters, so much as to stretch our sense of what medicine includes. Second, we will consider how patients and doctors can better understand disease if they consider its narratives consciously—that is, through literary categories such as frame, time, plot, and desire. We will have several units that considers the importance of narrative in medical practice—in reading case histories, in engaging in diagnostic interchanges, in doing medical research—in the terms of narrative analysis.

Most but not all of the reading will be American literature: the authors we will read include Abraham Verghese, Kay Jamison, Anne Fadiman, Sinclair Lewis, William Carlos Williams, J.M. Coetzee, and Sandra Cisneros. 

            

Rachel Harper

Section 1

Time: MW 2:00-2:50PM
Description: This is an English/Honors College Writing Intensive (WI) class which addresses both the theory and practice of tutoring and the foundations of good writing. Therefore, in addition to theoretical frames for what writing tutors do, it focuses on hands-on craft and practical experience working with other writers. At its heart is a shared set of assumptions about tutoring writing:

• In order to help someone else competently, a tutor needs to have an expert command of the craft of writing herself. This is not something we assume, or a simple prerequisite: we make it part of the course to sharpen each student's command of the craft of language.
• A tutor needs to know something not only about the practical application of rhetoric and composition theory, but also about the subtleties of verbal and nonverbal communication (we bring some perspectives from theater to bear in this area).
• Hands-on experience from both sides of the desk is a crucial part of the process of learning to work with other writers.
• Online tutoring is a valuable part of the skill set with both advantages and disadvantages over traditional face-to-face scenarios, and it makes considerable demands on the tutor's craft as a writer and as a reader of both prose and people.

This course also prepares students to work as writing tutors, and, in fact, doing well in it qualifies them for a part-time job working as Writing Center/Online Writery tutors in future semesters. Prerequisite:  Engl 1000. A/F.

This course fulfills a lower division Writing Intensive requirement and General Education credit (Humanities). Students interested in the course should contact Dr. Rachel Harper: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Ray Ronci
Section 1

Time: MWF 12:00PM - 12:50PM
Description: The Critical Praxis for this course is sometimes referred to as Archetypal Criticism, (based on Jung's theory of archetypes and the collective unconscious) and more commonly referred to as Myth Criticism. The basic paradigm of the heroic cycle is typically as follows: the Miraculous Birth, Childhood Initiations, the Calling, the Departure, the Descent and Trials, the Death, Resurrection and Apotheosis.

The study selections and the central theme of the course change periodically but almost always include David Adams Leeming's book, The Voyage of The Hero, an anthology of Hero Journey myths from all over the world. This is supplemented by Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth. Typically we then proceed through a close analysis of each of the following: Gilgamesh, The Bhagavad Gita, The Analects of Confucius, The Theban Plays, The Odyssey, Beowulf, The Tao Te Ching. Currently, our focus has been on Wisdom Literature of the East and West and has included The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma, The Secret Gospel of Thomas, The Last Days of Socrates, A Model Of The Universe: Lucretius and The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. Students are often asked to apply the principles of archetypal criticism and the hero paradigm to criticizing a contemporary novel or film.

Sw. Anand Prahlad

Section 1

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Description:The city has been a defining motif in Black films beginning with the first films of the early twentieth century and continuing through the contemporary period. To a large extent, the prevalence of urban landscapes in Black film have been reflections of historical trends, such as the migration of Black people from rural areas to urban centers. At the same time, however, Black films reflect influences of Hollywood and other filmic traditions in their treatments of urbanity. This course will explore ways in which urban landscapes function in films by Black filmmakers, including the negotiations of gendered, racial, and geographical identities. Film screenings will include Oscar Micheaux’s Murder in Harlem and Lying Lips; Spencer Williams’s Blood of Jesus; Melvin Van Peebles’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasss Song; Gordon Park’s Shaft and Superfly; Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep; Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing; Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust; and John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood. Assignments will include quizzes and a research paper.

Gabriel Fried

Section 1

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Description: Baseball is commonly hailed as the most literary, the most poetic of sports. Over the past century, it has been represented in countless novels, stories, poems, and plays, and has spawned its own brand of essay and memoir. This course is a survey of literature about baseball. Through reading assorted literary works (as opposed to sports writing) in a variety of genres, we will consider why baseball has been such a prevalent muse for such a variety of American writers and how it has been represented, all while honing our skills as readers of and writers about literature. As we do so, we will discuss the ways in which these writers use baseball as a context to portray other aspects of American life and culture. Authors may Roger Angell, Jim Bouton, Don Delillo, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Bernard Malamud, Marianne Moore, & August Wilson.

Julie Melnyk
Section 1

Time: 2pm, MWF
Description: In this course we will study works by six important British women writers of the nineteenth century: three poets (Felicia Hemans, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Christina Rossetti) and three novelists (Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and George Eliot).  The work of these women spans almost the whole of this century of dramatic change in culture, politics, religion, and women's lives, contexts crucial to our reading.  We will examine the development of women's writing across the century and the contribution of women writers to literature and to larger debates about religion, ethics, social change, and women's roles. (Crosslisted with Honors 2120H)

Clenora Hudson-Weems
Section 1

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Description: Theorizing Africana Literature is an undergraduate course designed to introduce students to 20th and 21st Centuries Africana Literature & Theory.  The turn of the 20th century in the Africana literary world is marked by the WEB DuBois & Booker T Washington Controversy,  using DuBois’ Souls of Black Folk, along with Marcus Garvey, which ushered us into the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.  Major writers of that era to be discussed include James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes Countee Cullen and Nella Larsen. Next was the WEB DuBois-Alain Locke Debate of the 30s, a precursor to the cultural & literary debates of the searing 60s. The DuBois-Locke debate is followed by two prominent theorists—Nick Aaron Ford (“A Blueprint for Negro Authors”) and Ann Petry (“The Novel as Protest Criticism.”   following the inception of the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s, ignited by the 1955 brutal lynching of 14-year-old Black Chicago Youth, Emmett Till, followed by Rosa Parks’ demonstration & Dr. Martin Luther King’s leadership in the CRM.0  The searing 60s highlights the Black Arts/Black Aesthetics Movement, with Amiri Baraka & Larry Neale, the prime movers, highlighting such poets as Sonia Sanchez and Haki Madhubuti. The 70s continued the Movement of the 60s, with Mari Evans, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou and Black Aesthetician critic Richard Barksdale, theorizing on it beyond that period, while the 80s ushered in Molefi Asante’s Afrocenticity. The latter part of the 20th & early 21st centuries highlight the Africana literary and theoretical works of several Africana theorists in general, including Robert L.Williams--Ebonics and Maulana Karenga--7 Principles & Kwanzaa.  Several Africana women theorists, including black feminists Barbara Smith and bell hooks, as well as Africana Womanist Clenora Hudson-Weems, who set forth literary theories as tools of analysis for Black women writers, including Toni Morrison--Beloved, Gloria Naylor--Mama Day and/or Sister Souljah--No Disrespect.
 
The main objective of the course is to introduce students to Africana literature and Africana theoretical constructs and explain how Africana paradigms are authentic ways of interpreting Africana texts. There will be a Mid-Term Exam, as well as pop quizzes and oral reports, which will give a fair evaluation of students and their knowledge of the material covered. The major texts of this course are Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition and Contemporary Africana Theory, Thought and Action:  A Guide for Africana Studies, as well as one of the novels listed above.

Sheri-Marie Harrison
Section 2

Time: T/Th 9:30am -10:45am
Description: This course is designed to introduce students to literature of the African Diaspora by reading novels written by Caribbean authors whose work engages the themes and forms of African Diaspora literature. We will focus on the novels’ utilization of Western literary traditions, traditional oral literatures, folklore, and music and explore commonalities in style and themes such as race, gender, nationality, and trans-nationalism.

E.J. Levy

Section 1

Time: M/We 4:00-5:15 PM
Description: This is an intermediate creative writing workshop in nonfiction, in which we will study a broad range of forms of creative nonfiction (memoir, personal essay, lyrical essay, literary journalism, and hybrid/experimental forms). Students will read and respond to samples of the form by established writers, practice craft through short exercises and assignments, produce two complete essays for workshop response, critique peer work, and participate in workshop discussions. The goals are to study varieties of creative nonfiction, and hone creative writing skills. While it is not our aim to develop a definition of creative nonfiction in this course, it is my hope that together we will explore some of the possibilities of the genre as we develop an awareness of the formal options it offers us.

Ray Ronci
Section 1

MWF 10:00AM - 10:50AM
This course covers roughly one hundred years of literary theory beginning with New Criticism and covering the major critical praxes of the 20th century such as formalism, structuralism, reader-oriented theories, Marxist theories, feminist theories, Post-structuralism, Post-colonialism and Postmodernism. We will study and discuss how these various practices influence the reading of a text; we will also examine the nature of what we mean by a "text." From a Postmodern point of view, everything is a text—a building, a hat, a hairstyle, a shopping center, an ad, etc.—and can be read, interpreted and commented upon. We will apply literary critical strategies when discussing fiction and poetry and apply the same strategies when discussing the various texts of contemporary American culture. Teaching methodology—informal lectures and discussion. Critical writing assignments.

Richard Schwartz
Section 1

TR 11:00AM - 12:15PM
The novel has become the predominant literary form for several reasons. Among these are its faithfulness to classic principles and its ability to sustain those principles in a vast variety of ways. It is, simultaneously, both predictable and malleable. We will discuss the origins of the novel in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and examine multiple examples (from the eighteenth century to the present) of the ways in which it can adhere to principle in fresh and varied ways. Approximately ten novels will be read.

David Read
Section 1

Time: TR 2:00-3:15
Description: This course is a chronological introduction to the important movements in British literature from the Anglo-Saxon period to the end of the eighteenth century.  Because we have such a limited time to cover such a broad period, we will not be studying drama in this course, but will concentrate on poetry and short- to medium-length prose texts.  We will try to combine close readings of the works on the syllabus with attention to  historical and cultural developments during a millennium of literary activity in England.

Allison Rutledge
Section 1

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Julie Melnyk

Section 4

Time: MWF 12:00-12:50
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Charles Marvin
Section 1

MWF 12:00PM - 12:50PM
This survey of early American literature will be structured as a survey of classic historical, vernacular, and gothic fiction, autobiographical narrative, transcendentalist essays, and poetry in a concentrated eighty-year period stretching from the presidencies of Washington to Lincoln. Making use of retrospective works such as Nathaniel Hawthorne's tales of 17th and 18th century New England and Herman Melville's burlesque Revolutionary-era memoir, Israel Potter, as frames of reference, we will also make forays into the documentary record of America's colonial past as recorded by its historical eyewitnesses. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, volumes A and B, will be the main text. Three exams, several short response papers, and contributions to an on-line database of research and critical commentary will be required over the course of the semester.

Alex Socarides
Section 2

Time: MWF 11-11:50
This course will provide a survey of American literature between the colonial period and the Civil War. We will read in a wide variety of genres including poetry, sermons, autobiography, essays, novels, songs, letters, journalism, and political tracts. Writers will include but not be limited to: Smith, Bradford, Bradstreet, Rowlandson, Edwards, Franklin, Occum, Equiano, Jefferson, Wheatley, Irving, Bryant, Schoolcraft, Garrison, Truth, Emerson, Jacobs, Thoreau, Douglass, Hawthorne, Poe, Fern, Melville, Alcott, Sigourney, Longfellow, Harper, Whitman, and Dickinson. We will turn our attention to the variety of issues with which these writers were concerned (including slavery, women’s rights, nationalism, empire, nature, the role of the outsider, and the various reform movements of the time) and focus on the ways in which they navigated these problems through their choice of literary genre. There will be regular reading quizzes, writing assignments to be posted to Blackboard, two short papers, and a final exam. This will be a 60-person section.

Tom Quirk

Section 1

Time: 12:30-1:45
Description:  Unlike a period course, a survey covers in somewhat broad strokes, the literary landscape over several generations. Our text will be the Bedford Anthology of American Literature, 1865-the Present.  I will try to make the readings as diverse as possible without losing a sense of an American literary culture.  That diversity will consist not simply as cultural and ethnic diversity, but also a variety of genres (fiction, poetry, drama, and non fiction) and individual talents.  The course work will consist of reading quizzes, a mid-term exam, and a take home final.

John Evelev
Section 2

Time:
Description:This course is a survey of the major movements of American literature from the Civil War to the present. We will read critically recognized American literary works and use them to define the major movements, including Realism (and its subsets of Regionalism and Naturalism), Modernism and Postmodernism. This course is a survey and necessarily synoptic, but we will take time to read a full-length novel from each of the major movements. Required Texts: The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 7th edition, volumes C-E , W.D. Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham, Alison Bechdel, Fun Home, and Don De Lillo, White Noise. Required work:reading blog/microthemes, 2 short papers, mid-term and non-cumulative final exam.

April Langley

Section 1

Time: M/W 8:00-9:15
Description: This writing intensive course introduces students to the major developments, themes, and works of African American literature-from its eighteenth-century beginnings to 1900, the post-Civil War and Reconstruction Era. The course has three objectives: a) to explore African American literature's continuing response to the call of African, American, and Afro-British American oral and written traditions-in the form of folktales, songs, sermons, prose, and poetry; b) to examine the social, political, and cultural influences of early African-American literature; and, c) to analyze the implications of this literature through class discussions and the following assignments: meaningful reading responses, one short essay, one oral presentation, one group presentation, and one final essay. (Writing Intensive) (Same as Black Studies 3400, 1)

Christopher Okonkwo
Section 1

TR 12:30-1:45
African American literature offers a fascinating body of works, unique in their history, diverse in their concerns, and engaging in their sometimes "call-and-response" conversation. Since the literature's inception centuries ago, African American writers and artists have through their works—folk/oral tradition, poetry, autobiographies, pamphlets, fiction, drama, non-fiction prose, speeches, paintings, songs and other cultural productions—contemplated the various issues integral to the complex experience of people of African descent in the United States. This course surveys important twentieth-century historical moments, writers, and works, as well as some of the intellectual debates and theories that have helped define the African American literary tradition. We will examine the tradition mainly from an historical, theoretical and critical standpoint and also supplement our readings and discussions with photographs, documentaries and audio recordings of significant, African American historical and literary figures and sociopolitical events. (Cross-listed as Black Studies 3410).

Maureen Konkle
Section 1

TR 2:00PM-3:15PM
This course surveys Native writing in English from the earliest traditions to contemporary fiction and poetry and is focused on issues that resonate in contemporary Native literature and artistic expression: history, identity, tradition, language, land, and sovereignty. We will be reading translated traditional stories, novels, autobiography, history, short stories, and poetry. Representative writers include Vine Deloria Jr., Joy Harjo, Robert Conley, Louise Erdrich, James Welch, and Sherman Alexie. This course can be used for fulfill the requirements for the College of Arts and Sciences Multicultural Certificate.

LuAnne Roth
Section 1

Time: M/W 2:00-3:15; screenings T 6:00-8:30 pm
Description: This course offers a folkloristic examination of contemporary legends (aka urban legends) that manifest in American film, in order to understand what these narratives reveal about American culture. In addition to reading, writing, and watching films, learning takes places through a process of critical discussion and debate. We will explore topics ranging from AIDS, fast food contamination, and cannibalism to aliens, ghosts, and zombies. We will try to answer such questions as: What and why do people believe? How and why are legends transmitted? What are the roles of fear and disgust? How are legends embodied? The weekly films, assignments, and in-class activities are geared toward providing information and skills necessary to identify contemporary legends in film, analyze these legend performances, and write/speak thoughtfully about them. By the end of the course, we will better understand how “American” values and beliefs are represented in these stories and the influence of these narratives in shaping behavior. Required Texts include: Film, Folklore, & Urban Legends (Koven 2008); Bodies: Sex, Violence, Disease, & Death in Contemporary Legend (Bennett 2005); Aliens, Ghosts, & Cults: Legends We Live (Ellis 2001); Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid: The Book of Scary Urban Legends (Brunvand 2004). (Cross-listed as Anthropology 3150 and Film Studies 3005:4).

Scott Cairns
Section 1

Time: MW 10:00-11:15am
Description: This is an intensive writing course, so students should be prepared to write and to discuss one another's works-in-progress. That said, we will work to understand the act of writing itself to be spiritual journey and not simply to be about spiritual journey. That is, we will work to acquire a relationship to our reading and writing that enables our making progress, a sense that we write to discover, and not simply to express what we think we have discovered already.

This is also a strenuous reading course, requiring that we engage the longstanding literary tradition of the spiritual journey prior to our attempting to add to that tradition. We will be reading excerpts from key works spanning many centuries, attending both to the conventions that continue and to ways that subsequent writers have modified those conventions.  We may also find that our appropriation of one or another of these model texts may be useful in our own literary production, our own engagement with the way, the roads we travel.

Cornelius Eady
Section 1

Time: MW 1-3:30 in Lafferre E3505
Description: 8 week course on the teaching of Creative Writing

Sam Cohen
Section 1

Time: T/R 12:30-1:45
Description: In this course we will read novels that take rock and roll music as their subject and inspiration. We will read them for what they have to say about the music as a cultural phenomenon and for how they are influenced as works of art by the music—that is, we’ll talk and write about them not just as books about rock but as rock books.

Possible texts include Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49; Don DeLillo, Great Jones Street; Jonathan Lethem, You Don't Love Me Yet; Nick Hornby, High Fidelity; Roddy Doyle, The Commitments; Neall Pollack, Never Mind the Pollacks; Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet; Aleksander Hemon, Nowhere Man; Camden Joy, The Last Rock Star Book or: Liz Phair, A Rant; Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad; Dana Spiotta, Stone Arabia; Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues; and others not listed. (We will also read some secondary work on rock music such as Greil Marcus, Mystery Train, and shorter pieces, and we will listen to a lot of loud music.)

Anne Myers
Section 1

Time:MWF 9:00-9:50 a.m.
Description: In this course we will study and enjoy several plays drawn mainly from the earlier part of Shakespeare's career. As the course title suggests, we will focus on the genres of History and Comedy. Plays are likely to include Richard II, Henry IV part I, Henry IV part 2, Henry V, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, and Measure for Measure. Assignments will consist of quizzes, exams, and a substantial term paper combining original textual analysis with historical research and a demonstrated knowledge of contemporary critical conversations about the plays.

Alexandra Socarides

Section 1

Time: MWF 12-12:50
Description: This course will provide utter immersion in one of the most prolific, beautiful, and challenging writers of the late nineteenth century: Henry James. We will read a diverse selection of his short and long prose, including “Daisy Miller” (1878), Washington Square (1880), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), “The Aspern Papers” (1888), “The Lesson of the Master” (1892), “The Real Thing” (1892), What Maisie Knew (1897), “The Turn of the Screw” (1898), The Wings of the Dove (1902), and “The Beast in the Jungle” (1903). We will concern ourselves with a variety of tasks, including reading James’ sentences closely, discussing the development of his style and subjects over time, and thinking about his place in literary history. Students will write a series of short papers in order to develop their close reading and research skills.

Christopher Okonkwo
Section 2

Time: 9:30-10:45
Description: Who, indeed, is this man, this literary giant, Albert Chinualumogu Achebe (1930-), and why is he so well known in world letters? That Achebe is one of the most widely studied literary figures of our time is irrefutable. In fact, in addition to his stature as Africa’s most important novelist, some scholars have insisted that no serious discussion of African, African diaspora, world, or 20th century literature for that matter is complete if it omits his canon. Someone once remarked casually on a rather positive development, namely, that Achebe’s Things Fall Apart has now become such a classic some instructors deploy it for pedagogy on everything on Africa. But even with that kind and degree of fame, many still know—well, besides Things Fall Apart—little else about his complex (Igbo/Nigerian/African) world, his other equally arresting works, and his craft. Quite likely not all readers are aware that Achebe is also an accomplished and award-winning poet, essayist, short story writer, a sharp literary, social and cultural critic, an intellectual, a college professor, editor, anthologist, and publisher; that he was a journalist, did toy with politics, called Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness a racist novel and, I hear, once rebuffed the Nobel Prize!

This course examines Achebe’s life and career. We will study his five novels, Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God, A Man of the People, and Anthills of the Savannah, supplementing them with his short stories, essays, poetry, some of his television and transcribed interviews, and relevant criticism on his over fifty-year oeuvre. The major objective is to get students familiar with these works (which are seldom taught together) and also to have students unpack Achebe’s literary, political and cultural concerns, his artistry, as well as his place especially in modern African fiction and in world literatures as a whole.

Elisa Glick
Section 1

Time:  MW 4-5:15 
Description: “The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible,” declared Oscar Wilde. “What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.”  In this course we will investigate the cult of aestheticism and depravity celebrated by the decadent movement of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in London, Paris, and New York. Breaking from the Victorian literary culture that preceded it and setting the stage for the modernist era that followed it, decadence was avant-garde, bohemian, morbid, and unapologetically perverse. Topics will include artificiality, deviance, queer sexualities, vampires, monstrosity, drugs, dandyism, boredom, pleasure, masochism, degeneration, death, commodity culture and consumerism, the city, prostitution, feminism, female sexuality, and gender performance.  Writers may include Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Baudelaire, J.K. Huysmans, Thomas Mann, Rachilde, Arthur Rimbaud, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Bram Stoker, Renée Vivien, and Oscar Wilde.

Karen Piper

Section 1

Time:
Description:  This class will examine women’s role in wars around the world in the mid-to-late twentieth century.  We will look at the way in which women’s experiences of war have ranged from being targeted or victimized to being active participants in warfare.  We will also discuss the impact of war on intimate relationships, including problems with PTSD, and analyze connections between nation building, war, and notions of masculinity.  We will we be reading contemporary fiction about wars around the world, including Africa, India, Europe, Japan, Iraq, and Palestine.  The novels we will read are Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India, S. by Slavenka Drakulic, Ibtisam Barakat’s Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of the Hills.  We will also read from the anthologies Women and War: An International Anthology and Visions of War, Dreams of Peace, a collection of poems and stories from women who served in the Vietnam War.

Johanna Kramer

Section 1

Time: MWF 12:00-12:50 pm
Description: This course is an intensive introduction to Old English, the earliest form of English recorded in writing and the language spoken in Anglo-Saxon England from about the 5th to the later 11th century. While the focus of this class is the acquisition and practice of the Old English language, the course also introduces students to the fascinating literature and culture of Anglo-Saxon England (including its art, archaeology, manuscript culture, and religious practices).

As we gain knowledge of the language, we will first read prose texts and then move on to more complex verse texts, among them such famous and brilliant poems like “The Wanderer” and “The Dream of the Rood.” This course is intended to give students a solid grounding in Old English grammar, enabling them to read a wide range of Old English texts in the original with the help of a dictionary and to proceed to more advanced studies in early English language and literature. Another purpose of this course is to become acquainted with the rich culture of Anglo-Saxon England, which combines oral and written, pre-Christian and Christian-Latin traditions.

For those students not typically too intrigued by things medieval, this course may hold some interest nonetheless in that studying Old English can teach us much about modern English, the etymology and semantic range of English words, the history of poetry and prose, and about the influences of Old English literature on subsequent literary periods and writers (Milton, Auden, Pound, Borges, etc.).

Assignments include (but are probably not limited to) daily translations, regular quizzes, a brief oral presentation, a poetry recitation, and exams. No prior knowledge of Old English or other languages is necessary to take this course. Cross-listed as Linguistics 4200/7200.

Johanna Kramer

Section 1

Time: MW 2:00-3:15 pm
Description: This course is dedicated to the study of women in both the literature and the history of early medieval England, covering texts produced ca. 700 to ca. 1150 C.E. In particular we will investigate how religious and secular authorities shaped the lives and literary representations Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman women. Current scholarship will supplement our knowledge of this period and provide tools for critical investigation of the literature. Our readings (in translation) will be writings for and about women, such as heroic poetry featuring stunningly powerful biblical and historical female figures, saints' lives, biblical narratives, historiography, and praise literature commissioned by a queen. Among possible topics of discussion are the influence of social and religious interests on the representation of women, the depiction of female saints in particularly Anglo-Saxon terms, gendered sainthood, the impact of female patronage on the production of texts and thus on medieval English literary culture, and the religious education of women. The course also provides a basic historical understanding of the period by learning about the social, political, and legal status of both noble and ordinary women and the opportunities available to women to act in positions of authority or to exert political power.

Emma Lipton

Section 2

Time: TR 9:30-10:45 am
Description:

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales provide an introduction to a broad range of medieval literature, revealing the surprising variety of genres and forms in the period, from the bawdy fabliaux, to the courtly romances, to the theological lessons of saints' lives. With each of the tales told from the perspective of a person from a distinctly different social position within society, Chaucer's tales allow us to study competing notions of community in the Middle Ages and the ways that social class shaped individuals' values. We will study the tales in relation to both social and religious politics, and investigate such topics as governance and authority, the construction of individuality, chivalry, fin amor ("courtly love"), gender and sexuality, and forms of spirituality. The course will focus both on close analysis and on the ways that major historical and cultural issues shaped literary texts.

William Kerwin

Section 1

Time: T/Th, 8:00-9:15
Description: Renaissance England produced a flourishing of short poetry, of a wide variety of kinds. Something radically different from the long-established traditions of the medieval world emerged in the writing of the period. Lyric—poetry of intense emotion—became a suddenly valuable kind of verbal currency, spent to express individual feeling and to make social comments. The lyric and the satire flourished both as languages of love or personal self-definition and as languages of social involvement. Private and public worlds—Renaissance poets considered both, often at the same time.

Urbanization, humanism, the printing press, the reformation, debates over women's roles, colonialism, the replacement of monarchy with a parliament—all of these historical movements and controversies created enormous tension and debate, and poetry was one way intellectuals tried to make sense of the world. We will read poetry with attention to these changes. The authors we will read include John Skeleton, Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard, George Gascoigne, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Amelia Lanyer, Philip Sidney, Mary Wroth, John Donne, George Herbert, Ben Jonson, Katherine Philips, Robert Herrick, and Andrew Marvell. The more specific poetic forms this class will read include the sonnet, the satire, the Ovidian narrative poem, the poem of place, the epigram, the libel, the ballad, and the metaphysical lyric. And as we read and try to make sense of the poems, we will try to answer a series of connected questions:

• What forms of poetry appeared?
• What gives them power?
• How do they relate to the changing world around them?

Your main job is to try and make connections: within the poems, and between the poems and the worlds outside of them. Students will write two short papers, perform a short speech, and produce as part of a group a web-based research presentation. There will be both a midterm and a final exam.

TEXTS: The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume 1B—The Early Modern Period. Note: 4th edition only!

Lily Gurton-Wachter

Section 1

Time: Tues/Thurs 9:30am - 10:45am
Description:

This course will introduce you to the poetry of British Romanticism through intense study of three of the period’s major poets: William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Percy Shelley. Writing in the tumultuous years following the French Revolution, these poets asked how poetry might contribute to or complicate political change, and how it might represent history in new and unexpected ways; each of them investigates the nature of revolution, reform, and rights, and poetry’s relation to all three, yet in radically different ways. This course will teach you how to read poetry closely and carefully, with an attention to its form, its sounds, and to different kinds of figurative and poetic language.  Of particular interest will be the role of the feelings in political change, the shifting role of women in the period, competing definitions of freedom, and the tenuous relations between nature and nation, memory and history, and word and image. Class requirements will include weekly close readings, multiple essays, and quizzes.

Maureen Konkle
Section 1

Time: TuTh 5 - 6:15 p.m.
Description:  This course surveys the mythology of the American West in light of the history of U.S. continental expansion and relations with indigenous people, from Lewis and Clark through the first “westerns” (in film and fiction) of the early twentieth century. We’ll be reading fiction and nonfiction by travelers, explorers, activists, military men and their wives, performers, outlaws, settlers, indigenous people, and one ex-dentist from Ohio, as well as looking at paintings and photographs from across the period. Particular attention will be paid to the invention of the authenticity of the Westerner, of the Indian, and of the wilderness; consideration will be given to questions of what purpose that invented authenticity served and how it continues to circulate in the U.S.  Assignments include periodic tests and several brief research projects.

Tom Quirk
Section 2

Time: 9:30-10:45
Description: Twice Read Tales.  This course deals with five somewhat difficult texts that deserve, in fact probably can't be understood without, a second reading. So, we will read the texts by mid-term, then turn around and read them a second time. Students will write a brief (3-5 pages) reaction to each book on the first reading.  After a second reading they will critique or otherwise react to their first paper, explaining in what ways their understanding or appreciation for the text changed.  Also there will be reading quizzes to make sure that you are indeed reading the texts a second time.The texts I have chosen are: Walden, Billy Budd, The Professor's House, The Sound and the Fury, and "Song of Myself."

Ray Ronci
Section 1

MWF 2:00PM - 2:50PM
The semester begins with an in-depth study of the term Postmodernism as it applies to philosophy, politics, feminism, religion, popular culture, music and literature. After establishing a basic understanding of what Postmodernism means, we will direct our focus towards Postmodern Poetics by carefully examining the poetry and selected writings of such poets as Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Kenneth Koch, Denise Levertov, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, Susan Howe and so on. There are at least two formal papers required for this class, one on Postmodernism(s), the other on Postmodern Poetics.

Christopher Okonkwo
Section 1

TR 9:30AM - 10:45AM
Leasing its caption "Mythic Black Fiction" from Jane Campbell's book of the same title, this course will meditate on John B. Vickery's observation that "The history of literature everywhere attests to the closeness and complexity of the relation between literature and myth," an affinity evident in "their shared traits of narrative, character, image and theme." Following an overview of contextual myth scholarship, we will, specifically, engage with the mythopoesis, the mythmaking imperative, in African American literature and culture. Antebellum and postbellum African American literature discloses earlier black writers' mythic consciousness, an awareness subsisted partly on the conventions of romance. It is twentieth-century African American authors, however, who have taken their (re)inventions of the (im)probable to new heights.

So why are black writers drawn so strongly to myth? Are they simply interested in its thematic, aesthetic, and affective value? Not so, says Jacqueline de Weever: "The experiences of black people in the New World, into which they have been forcibly thrust against their will, cannot be [fully] told or treated in realistic or naturalistic traditions in which much of American literature has been cast—the pain of the results of three centuries of oppression is too great to be faced and confronted in a realistic mode. Such an experience demands another mode for which mythic narrative is more appropriate." Thus, when black writers invert history, disintegrate time, re-live an aborted slave insurrection, supplicate a trickster god, pit an infernal, Eugenicist spirit against an ageless shape-shifter/Earth mother, hyperbolize their hero, borrow the schematic of Dante's hell, or star an unnaveled pilot/Pilate and some flying Africans— all that helps them tell a political good story, affirm African diaspora ways of knowing and being, confront their oppression and, most important, imagine a more livable life and future.

Clenora Hudson-Weems
Section 1

Time: TR 11:00AM - 12:15PM
Description: English 4420, Africana Womanism, is an undergraduate and graduate course specifically designed to broaden one's scope from a family-centered perspective in the area of issues, recurring themes and/or trends in modern Africana women fiction, highlighting its applicability to our everyday lives worldwide. An in depth study of the lives and selected works by five (5) leading Africana women writers—Noted Pre-Africana Womanist, Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God); Senegalese novelist, Mariama Ba (So Long a Letter—currently out of print) or African American/Caribbean Novelist, Paule Marshall (Praisesong for the Widow); Nobel Prize Winning author, Toni Morrison (Beloved); Popular Cultural Novelist, Terry McMillan (Disappearing Acts); and Former Rap Star Artist, Sister Souljah (No Disrespect)—will be enhanced by critical readings of two (2) books from the Africana Womanism Trilogy—Africana Womanism:  Reclaiming Ourselves (1993) and Africana Womanism Literary Theory (2004), as well as scholarly articles by and about the various authors. Methodologically,  we will be highlighting the prioritization of Race, Class & Gender, a key feature in this powerful paradigm, committed to the empowerment and equality of all, rather than a gender exclusive agenda (female-centered, female-empowerment) so characteristic of other female based constructs. Students will be introduced to an authentic theoretical concept and methodology, Africana Womanism, and will be applying Africana Womanist theory to these Africana womanist novels, which clearly reflect our daily lives throughout the world.

Meshed together, the primary and secondary reading materials, as well as other media materials, will aid students in refining their own individual concepts about not only the writings of the individual authors, but about critical current issues, particularly as they relate to Africana women and their families and communities. The ultimate objective of the course, then,  is to enhance one's knowledge and appreciation of Africana women and their interconnection with their families (men and children) in particular and Africana life and culture (historically and currently) in general.

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to yet another theoretical construct, Africana Womanism, in addition to other female-based theories, Black Feminism and Womanism, all of which are presented in one of our main textbooks—Call and Response:  The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition. Africana Womanism an authentic paradigm designed specifically for all women of African descent, and by extension for all men and women in general.  Students will demonstrate their knowledge of this information via the Mid-Term Exam on the theory itself, quizzes on the novelists, oral reports, and a final research paper or Annotated Bibliography on the theory.

Sheri-Marie Harrison
Section 1

Time:T/Th 11:00am -12:15am

Description: This course will explore the ways selected Caribbean women writers have voiced themselves within literary discourse. We will read autobiographical narratives written by women across four centuries to explore the locations of Caribbean women writers across history within larger discourses of gender, sexuality, postcolonial cultural studies, identity, language, politics, and subaltern feminism.

Richard Schwartz
Section 1

R 2:00PM - 4:30PM
We will block out plans for a novel, writing a short treatment, the first and last chapters and an outline of the major plot arcs. Particular attention will be paid to the complexities of the planning process and the writing techniques employed by noteworthy practitioners. We will look at exemplary works by James Ellroy, James Lee Burke, Thomas Harris and Raymond Chandler, paying attention to the elasticity of the genre as well as its central elements.

Trudy Lewis
Section 3

Time: W 2-4:30 pm
Description: Advanced Fiction: Map, Script, Territory

This semester, we will explore fiction as map, script, and territory. Texts will include: Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Roman Fever by Edith Wharton, People of the Sea by David Thomson, I Sailed with Magellan by Stuart Dybek, How to Leave the Leper Colony by Tiphanie Yanique, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and Character and Storytelling for Games by Lee Sheldon. Students will be responsible for 3-4 collaborative stories, 3-4 literary exercises, a full-length story (10-25 pages), and a revision.  You should also come to class prepared to write responses to the readings and to take an active role in class activities, which will include re-reading, writing, discussion, collaboration, and improvisation. 

EJ Levy

Section 1

Time: T 1:00 - 3:30 PM
Description:This is an advanced creative writing workshop in nonfiction (personal essay, memoir, literary journalism, etc.) for upper level undergraduates and graduate students. Students enrolling in this class should have taken at least one lower level creative writing workshop, preferably in creative nonfiction, though fiction, poetry, drama, or journalism workshop/writing experience is acceptable. Students will read and discuss mostly contemporary samples of creative nonfiction by established writers, practice craft through short exercises and assignments, produce two essays for workshop response, write constructive and considered critiques of peer work, and actively participate in workshop discussions. The goals are to study varieties of creative nonfiction forms, and to hone creative writing skills in this genre.

Aliki Barnstone
Section 1

Time:
Description:

Matthew Gordon
Section 1

Time: TR 9:30-10:45
Description: This course examines various aspects of the English language from the sound system to the grammatical structure in order to better understand how English works. While our focus is on English, this course is also about language in general and the ways in which language is studied in the field of linguistics. You will gain not only knowledge about the English language but also an appreciation of the approach linguists take in analyzing their subject matter. The overarching goal is to promote greater linguistic awareness and to provide students with the tools needed to think about language from new perspectives. Course requirements include exams and daily homework and quizzes. Also useful will be critical thinking skills and a willingness to recognize the relative insignificance of commas.

Matthew Gordon
Section 1

Time: TR 11:00AM - 12:15AM
Description: This course examines the history of English from the prehistoric roots that bind it to other languages of Europe and Asia, through the period of its earliest attestation, and into the modern era. We will see that English has undergone dramatic alterations throughout its life, and we will look at changes in sounds, grammar, meaning, and vocabulary. To understand these changes and why they occur, we will look for explanations in both the structure of the language and in the social history of its speakers. We will approach the subject from the perspective of modern linguistics and will, therefore, also develop familiarity with the theory and analytical methods of this field.

Vicki Carstens

Section 1

Times: MWF 11-11:50
Description: The course provides an in-depth study of the universal properties of phrase- and sentence-level grammar, based on comparison of English and other languages. Prerequisite: English/Ling 4600 or another comparable linguistics course. The approach will be that of Noam Chomsky's Minimalist program.

Textbook: Adger, David. 2003. Core Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cross list: Linguistics 4640

Elaine Lawless
Section 1

Time: 11:00-12:15 T/Th
Description:  This course will offer a very basic understanding of the various forms of oral narrative forms studied by folklorists and oral tradition scholars.  These forms and the way scholars have studied them will include, epic, ballad, folk tale, fairy tale, legend, personal experience stories.  The course will familiarize students with basic approaches to the study of these narrative forms as well as the various indices that have been produced for their historical study as well as an introduction to how these narrative forms proliferate in contemporary cultural settings and are reflected/utilized in creative fiction.

Anand Prahlad
Section 1

Time:
Description:This course is the second in a sequence exploring key theories and philosophical threads of thought in the Black diaspora. In contrast to Eurocentric philosophical traditions, much of the theory and philosophy throughout the Diaspora is grounded primarily in folk culture. Even canonical authors such as W.E.B. DuBois, Frantz Fanon, C.L.R. James, or Marcus Garvey were in dialogue with “the wisdom of the folk.” Beginning with pre-colonial Africa and following the path of colonization and post-colonization through the Caribbean and into the Americas, we will examine some of the major philosophical tropes in the Black Caribbean. We will concentrate our focus on tropes reflected in the genres of the proverb, religion (Vodou, Kumina, Rastafari), musical traditions (roots reggae), and festivals (carnival), noting historical, social and political forces that either help to maintain older theories or to generate hybrid forms. Readings will include excerpts from John Mbiti’s African Religions and Philosophy, Janheinz Jahn’s Muntu: African Culture and the Western World, Harold Courlander’s A Treasury of Afro-American Folklore, Anand Prahlad’s, Reggae Wisdom, Sandra T. Barnes’s Africa’s Ogun, Nathaniel Samuel Murrell’s Chanting Down Babylon, and Karen McCarthy Brown’s Mama Lola. Assignments will include two papers exploring motifs in Black philosophy.

Dana Kinnison
Section 1 TBD

Dana Kinnison
Section 3

TBD
This section of English 4950 is for students who secure a publishing internship independently and want to earn academic credit for the experience.

Gabe Fried
Section 1

TBD
Persea Books is a small, prestigious publishing house founded in 1975. While the press is based in New York City, its poetry division operates out of Columbia, Missouri. As interns, students will be exposed to (and do real-world work on behalf of) many aspects of Persea's poetry series. This includes reading submissions, writing reader reports and press releases, doing Web research for book covers, proofing book galleys, interviewing authors, assisting with author tours and promotion, and co-administering contests. Interested students will also have the opportunity to gain familiarity with some practical (and resume-building) facets of book publishing (e.g. book contracts, copyright application, subsidiary rights). While a broad familiarity with contemporary poetry is not required, an interest in contemporary poetry is essential to this course. NB: This course requires permission of the instructor.

Speer Morgan
Section 2

Time: Tuesday 2:30-5:00
Description:The Missouri Review is a leader in teaching students about literary publishing through our unique internship. Our goal is to train young literary editors in an intense, systematic program. The course is offered to undergraduate and graduate students in all disciplines, but the core group consists of students majoring in English who want to pursue careers in the publishing industry. 

An internship at The Missouri Review provides opportunities for students to gain valuable hands-on experience in publishing. From their first day, interns were an integral part of the general operations of magazine. The editors encourage individual initiative and teamwork, while offering interns the resource off their 33 years of publishing experience. Students learn practical editing skills and generate publishing credit by writing reviews or conducting author interviews. Interested students write blogs and are otherwise involved in web content development, as well as assisting in producing digital audio versions of the print magazine. Students also learn the basics, such as manuscript acquisition, magazine distribution and other business practices. They may help run an audio\video contest, and learn grant writing. As they learn industry skills, interns are encouraged to consider careers in publishing.

An ongoing challenge in higher education is providing students with real-world experience to complement solid traditional scholarship. Potential employers want to know what students have actually accomplished, as well as what academic courses are taken. Our interns are able to say that they have contributed to one of our finest literary magazines, helping shape American literature.

One demonstration of the effectiveness of our intensive internship program is that many of our interns enter into commercial republishing fields, editing other magazines or working at presses. Many others are employed as teachers and professors. Previous and current interns have published more than 80 books and contributed to most of the top American literary magazines. They have won major literary prizes including the National Book Award, the Delmore Schwartz Prize, the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, Guggenheim fellowships, and National Endowment for the Arts individual writing fellowships.

Karen Piper
Section 1

Time:
Description: This class will examine women’s role in wars around the world in the mid-to-late twentieth century.  We will look at the way in which women’s experiences of war have ranged from being targeted or victimized to being active participants in warfare.  We will also discuss the impact of war on intimate relationships, including problems with PTSD, and analyze connections between nation building, war, and notions of masculinity.  We will we be reading contemporary fiction about wars around the world, including Africa, India, Europe, Japan, Iraq, and Palestine.  The novels we will read are Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India, S. by Slavenka Drakulic, Ibtisam Barakat’s Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of the Hills.  We will also read from the anthologies Women and War: An International Anthology and Visions of War, Dreams of Peace, a collection of poems and stories from women who served in the Vietnam War.

John Evelev
Section 2

Time:
Description:This course will look at literary depictions of madness across the span of American literature, considering it not so much as a literal disease but a trope or metaphor, one that shifts and transforms over our nation's history.  From the romantic era's gothic fascination with the 'dark' side of the Enlightenment, through the repression/oppression of the late 19th century, the neurosis of the modern era, into the cathartic rage of the 1950s and '60s, and the postmodern fascination with schizophrenia, serial killers and delusions of grandeur.  Possible Texts to be included: Brown, Wieland, Poe stories, Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper," James,"The Beast in the Jungle," O'Neill, "Long Day's Journey into Night," Eliot, "The Waste Land," Ginsberg, "Howl," Confessional Poetry by Lowell, Plath & Sexton, Ellis, American Psycho, Harris, Silence of the Lambs, Spiotta, Stone Arabia.  Additional secondary readings will offer literary theories and historical context.  Required work includes multiple research prospectuses, a class presentation and a long final research project taken through the revision process.

Timothy Materer
Section 3

Time: TR 9:30-10:45
Description: The seminar will consist of case studies in the revision of famous modern and contemporary poems. We will watch poems develop through many drafts into finished works. At the same time, students will write essays about the poems that will also be revised in this Writing Intensive course.

Poets will include Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, James Merrill and Elizabeth Bishop. Most of the poetry manuscripts will be taken from the web. To study the most famous literary revision of the modern age, however, the course requires: The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts Including the Annotations of Ezra Pound (Harvest). The final project may be either a paper or a website.

Questions about the course may be sent to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Anne Myers

Section 1

Time: MWF 10-10:50 a.m.
Description: This course will focus on works of literature from several genres and periods that deal with the city of London, past and present. Along with each work, students will practice using appropriate research tools and will explore different critical perspectives. Central texts are likely to include Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, selections from eighteenth-century periodicals, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Zadie Smith's White Teeth. Coursework will include research presentations, a term paper prospectus, annotated bibliography and rigorously-researched critical term paper. In presentations and papers, students will be given latitude to explore their own interests in relation to the broad themes and ideas of the course.

Frances Dickey

Section 2

Time: M/W/F 11:00-11:50 a.m.
Description:  This course is the first part of the two-semester Honors sequence in the English Department, and is intended to lead into the second part, the writing of the Honors senior thesis. The course will include an inquiry into research and writing techniques within the discipline (working with primary and secondary sources, using the library and its reference materials efficiently, doing historical and interdisciplinary research, and applying theory appropriately in interpretive writing); an investigation of major critical, theoretical, and practical questions in the field of English studies; and a workshop-oriented unit in which each student will prepare a longer research paper.  

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the idea of the avant-garde emerged:  writers and artists began to experiment radically with new forms and topics and developed a confrontational attitude towards their audiences. Collaborative groups such as Cubism, Futurism, and Imagism and individual writers such as James Joyce and T. S. Eliot produced works that continue to astound after 100 years. In this course we will develop a concept of the avant-garde from literary and artistic works as well as criticism. In their research, students will have the opportunity to apply their understanding of the avant-garde to other twentieth-century developments.

Julie Melnyk

Section 3

Time: Tues/Thurs 2:00pm - 3:15pm
Description: This course is the first part of the two-semester Honors sequence in the English Department, and is intended to lead into the second part, the writing of the Honors senior thesis. The course will include an inquiry into research and writing techniques within the discipline (researching and working with primary and secondary sources, using the library and its reference materials efficiently, doing historical and interdisciplinary research, applying literary theory in interpretation); an investigation of major critical, theoretical, and practical questions in the field of English studies; and a workshop-oriented unit in which each student will prepare a longer research paper. Students will write a short essay using research on each of the core texts we read and then choose one essay to expand into the long research paper, which will take up the final weeks of the semester. 

Over the course of the first part of the semester, we will consider a selection of texts from a range of historical periods and contexts, which each investigate the unsteady distinction between the human and the nonhuman. We will consider the problems and possibilities that accompany figures of monstrosity, animality, and barbarity and ask how these inhuman figures might reveal varying approaches to otherness, register anxieties about technology, power, and race, or disclose definitions of the human that might otherwise be inaccessible. Central to our discussion will a few basic questions: how do we define the human, the nonhuman, and the inhuman? Who counts as human or less than human? What is the relationship between dehumanization and violence? And how does literature animate or anthropomorphize figures of the nonhuman? Apart from these central questions, our research, theoretical reading, and discussion will be expansive, looking beyond this broad topic to ask questions about sympathy, race, gender, politics, spectatorship, and the shifting role of literature. We will do specific historical research, using primary documents, into the history of colonialism, animal studies, biopolitics, aesthetics, human rights, and the history of science. Literary readings by Coetzee, Ishiguro, Kafka, Shakespeare, Mary Shelley with supplementary texts by Burke, Butler, Foucault, Freud, Johnson, Said.

Samuel Cohen
Section 1

Time: R 6-7:30 p.m.
Description: This course is a one-hour course, the first half of a two-semester course designed to help introduce new graduate students in English to graduate study in general and in our department in particular, to the concrete procedures and long-term goals involved in successfully negotiating their programs of study, and to the discipline. We will meet biweekly, generally, and will focus on a single topic or group of related topics for each meeting, assisted by Gregory Colón Semenza’s Graduate Study for the 21^st Century and any other reading we turn up in our efforts to understand the ever-changing world of graduate study in English and the professional opportunities that await at the other end of your graduate school careers. In addition to attending all class meetings, there will be a number of additional requirements, all designed to expose you to the intellectual life of the department, the discipline, and the humanities as well as to the professionalization I will be encouraging through the year.

Elizabeth Chang
Section 1

Time: Tuesday 11-12:15
Description: The goal of this workshop will be to expose and immerse graduate students in the genres that they will be required to master as they make their way through the profession: dissertation, article, conference abstract and paper, fellowship/grant application, critical introduction, and job materials. This course is meant to offer students who are emerging from their comps a structured environment in which writing (and a whole lot of talking about writing) will happen on a regular basis. Additionally, this course will aim to address the need for graduate students to begin preparing themselves for the job market by sending out an article and drafting job materials before the fall they go on the market. This course will meet once a week for the entire year. Only students who plan on taking the course for the entire year should apply. The application process will be advertised at the end of Spring 2012.

Stephen Karian
Section 2

Time: Th 11-1:30
Description: This course will provide intensive preparation and support for graduate students currently on the job market in both literature and creative writing. We will workshop job letters, CVs, dissertation abstracts, statements of teaching philosophy, writing samples, and job talks. We will also practice MLA interviews, campus interviews, job talks, and teaching demonstrations. Readings for the course will come primarily from Kathryn Hume, Surviving Your Academic Job Hunt: Advice for Humanities PhDs (revised edition, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and from The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and other sources. Because the job market is fast-paced in the fall (job postings begin to appear in mid-September and initial deadlines are as early as mid-October), students are strongly advised to work over the summer. Specifically, they should: 1) acquire Kathryn Hume’s book and read her first chapter; 2) prepare drafts of their job letters, CVs, dissertation abstracts, and statements of teaching philosophy for the first class meeting; and 3) arrange for recommendation letters to be ready for the fall. They are also required to attend the job market meeting on Friday, May 4 at 3pm in Tate 114D.

Donna Strickland
Section 1

Time:
Description:

Martha Townsend
Section 1

Time:  T 1:00-3:30
Description:  According to Ed White, “Every Rhetoric, Composition, and [Writing Studies] graduate who plans to teach at an American college or university should expect to serve a term or more as a campus Writing Program Administrator (WPA) at some point—probably sooner than later and probably sooner than is really appropriate.”  This seminar offers professional preparation that every graduate student in the field needs in order to assume those responsibilities, with particular emphasis on the intellectual work of WPAs and the implications of WPA work for achieving promotion and tenure.  Reading, discussion, activities, and assignments will focus on multiple programmatic settings: first-year composition, WAC/WID, and writing centers.   Likewise, Writing Studies scholars should understand issues involved in assessing writing, not only of individual students and whole programs, but also with regard to state and national policies that affect writing instruction.  Approximately three-quarters of the course will be devoted to WPA issues, with one-quarter devoted to writing assessment.  Students will be responsible for leading class discussions, maintaining a blog, and assembling a portfolio of genre-based documents relevant to WPA work.

Carsten Strathausen
Section 1

Time: W 7:00-9:30
Description: This course focuses on current trends in literary theory. Our overall goal is to explore both the philosophical as well as the socio-political dimension of theoretical paradigms such as structuralism, postmodernism, deconstruction, post-colonialism, psychoanalysis, feminism, Marxism, reader response, etc. Two critical premises will guide our discussion: first, the belief that there is no “meta-theory” able to account for all the insights fashioned by the different approaches to literary and cultural production. The second premise holds that theories do not just emerge out of a socio-historical vacuum, but always carry within themselves traces of the particular context in which they are “born.” Examining that context, then, is an essential part for “understanding” literary and aesthetic theory in general. Rather than dismissing a particular critical approach as “unrealistic” or “outdated,” it is far more productive to assess its strength and weaknesses within and beyond the historical context during which it emerged. This approach should also help students to become more familiar with whatever theory they might find most useful for their own work. The course begins with a brief discussion of the “linguistic turn” in 20th century theory and the fundamental importance of Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics from 1916. Thereafter, we shall read different sections of the central text for this course

David Crespy

Section 1

Time: R 3:00-5:30
Description:  

Emma Lipton

Section 1

Time: T 12:30-3pm
Description: In this class, we will read The Canterbury Tales and selections from Chaucer’s others poems, along with relevant sources and contemporary texts. Chaucer criticism has historically defined the field of late medieval literary studies, working as both a harbinger of critical trends and a bell weather of the current state of the field.   We will read some of the most influential works of Chaucer criticism and survey the latest work in the field to get a sense of the variety of critical approaches that have been used to talk about Chaucer’s work.  We will consider such topics as: manuscript history; source study and translation; medieval theories of authorship; medieval rhetoric and poetics; social and political commentary on English society, on the status of the church, on the family and sexuality; Chaucerian affect and ethical approaches to Chaucer.

Stephen Karian

Section 1

Time: W 4-6:30pm
Description: This course examines Restoration and eighteenth-century British literature through the theoretical and methodological lens of “book history,” a sub-field in literary studies, history, and related disciplines that is concerned with the production, circulation, and consumption of texts in historical perspective. Book history has much to teach us for any milieu, and it holds particular importance for the long eighteenth century, a period that witnessed: the end of pre-publication censorship; the codification of copyright and the successful challenge to perpetual copyright; the expansion of the English printed book trade beyond London to the English provinces, Scotland, Ireland, and elsewhere; the growth of the professional author and the associated Grub Street mythos; the emergence of newspapers and magazines; attempts to construct a national literary canon; and the establishment of coffee houses at the beginning of this period and of circulating libraries near the end.

We will explore these topics and others in our readings and discussions of relevant primary and secondary material. Possible primary texts include: Rochester’s “Allusion to Horace”; Dryden’s “MacFlecknoe”; Swift’s Tale of a Tub and some of his poems; selections from The Tatler, The Spectator, and other periodicals; Pope’s Dunciad and other poems; Johnson’s Life of Savage, Life of Pope, and other writings; and other less canonical works, some of which will be accessed using major digital resources such as Early English Books Online and Eighteenth-Century Collections Online. We will also consult relevant holdings in Ellis Library’s Special Collections and will learn how to use major print and digital bibliographical tools. This course should be of interest for anyone wishing to study eighteenth-century literature or literature from another period from the perspective of book history.

Course requirements will likely include a full-length seminar paper, oral presentations, and a book review of a relevant scholarly book.

Elizabeth Chang
Section 1

Time:
Description: The aim of this course will be to expose you to the vast amount of writing produced in the nineteenth-century that is neither novels nor poetry. We will focus generally on the writing of Victorian personhood, covering discussions of individualism, the colonial subject, biography, aesthetic self-fashioning, forms of personal and social cultivation and more. In so doing we will also observe the connections between the kinds of writing that we read--memoirs, essays, histories, biographies, diaries, journalism, and more--and the major works of fiction and poetry that define the era. Authors covered will probably include Lamb, Carlyle, Mill, Arnold, Ruskin, Gaskell, Dickens, Beeton, Mayhew, Darwin, Stanley, Kingsley, Pater, and Wilde, among others. 

Patricia Okker
Section 1

Time: Mondays, 1:00-3:30
Description: In the first half of this course we will do a short but intensive study of antebellum women's fiction. In the second half of the course, we will complete a collaborative research project focused on one piece of fiction that has not been previously studied in any significant way. It is my hope that this seminar will result in a publication (possibly in digital form) for the seminar participants. Students who are interested in this seminar are encouraged to speak with me about its structure and requirements. Previous knowledge of nineteenth-century American literature is not required, but a willingness to accept the responsibilities, pleasures, and frustrations of collaborative work is required.  --Pat Okker

Frances Dickey

Section 1

Time: Thurs 12:30 to 3:00 p.m.
Description:  In this course we will read the poetry of T. S. Eliot and Elizabeth Bishop in the context of their major influences and the main critical approaches to their work.  Though they may seem at first to have little in common, both came to their vocations by reading Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Laforgue, and other nineteenth-century French poets.  Drawn to religious and philosophical themes yet preternaturally attentive to sensory experience, both perfected the art of the “luminous detail.”  In addition to acquiring a thorough knowledge of their oeuvres, we will develop a reading of these poets as American Symbolists.  Coursework includes reading of primary and secondary sources, several short papers, and a research project.

Trudy Lewis
Section 1

Time: M 4-6:30 pm
Description: In The Red and the Black, Stendhal describes the novel as “a mirror carried along a high road,” insisting that scandalized readers take up their complaints, not with the novelist, but with the inspector of roads. “The mirror shows the mire, and you blame the mirror!” This semester, we will consider the role of mimesis in our own work and in a number of classic and contemporary texts, including David Shields' 2010 manifesto Reality Hunger. Selected fictions will include: The Masterpiece by Emile Zola, This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski, Open Secrets by Alice Munro, War by Candlelight by Daniel Alarcon, Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet, and Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor. Students will be responsible for weekly reports on their own fiction, two workshop stories and/or novel chapters, two formal responses to the work of their peers, an experiment in naturalism, and a revision.

EJ Levy
Section 1

Time: M 7:00-9:30 PM

Description:This is a graduate-level creative writing workshop in creative nonfiction. While this course is intended for advanced writers, students working at an advanced level in other genres (poetry, fiction, theatre, journalism) and scholarly fields are welcome. Students will read and discuss samples of the form by established writers. Students will be expected to produce two (or three, depending on enrollment) complete essays for workshop response (if three, one may be a revision toward a publishable piece). Students are expected to write constructive and considered critiques of peer work, and actively participate in assigned reading and workshop discussions. The goals are to study and practice varieties of creative nonfiction forms, with an understanding of the traditions of and innovations to these forms, and to hone creative writing skills in this genre.

Scott Cairns
Section 1

Time: Mondays 4:00-6:30pm
Description: The course will begin with an examination of various models of literary influence, privileging a model that is less agonistic than it is collaborative. Ideally, our productions will reciprocally enhance our productions and our readings of their initiating texts.

Each student will produce 8 or more responsive poems to be presented to workshop along with photo-copies of their initiating texts. Workshop itself will involve your presenting the initiating poem (or other artifact) and then presenting your responsive production.

As you are, presumably, here to develop your skills as a teacher of writing as well as your skills as a writer, each student will be expected to take very seriously the development of every other student, giving full critical attention to every poem submitted for workshop, indicating in writing and in classroom conversation how that poem might become a richer, more rewarding text for the attentive reader.

In any event, we hope to establish a reliable, ongoing dialogic practice, one that enables ongoing relationships with prior texts, and that will assist our own continuing production over a lifetime of writing.  And more than that, we hope to develop an efficacious vocabulary, a provisional way of articulating what we come to understand as the generative process of being in continuing dialogue with literary precursors.

Elaine Lawless
Section 1

Time: Thursdays 3:00-6:00, Tate 310
Description: This course will begin with a basic introduction (from several different disciplines) to the theory and practice of contemporary qualitative Ethnographic research and writing, relying primarily on the approaches emerging from the fields of folklore, anthropology, religious studies, and feminist studies. Students will learn methods of ethnographic research, read several different ethnographies including Malinowsky, Meads, Meyerhoff, Brown, Graham and Alba, Hurston, Lawless, and Lawless/Carver, as well as works on the theory of ethnographic studies, including Clifford and Marcus, Behar, Minh-ha, and Visweswaran. Following this in-depth examination of both traditional and more creative/experimental ethnographic writing, the course will move toward a consideration of selected works contemporary fiction that use the tropes of ethnographic field research and the questions of ethnographic ethics and integrity as the fictional creative impulse of the author.  Juniors, Seniors, and Graduate Students.

(Cross-listed as Anthropology 8157 and Religious Studies 8700).