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Department of English Course OfferingsAutumn 2015

English 1110.01First Year English CompositionNan [email protected]

English 1110.01 is an introductory writing course that employs methods of rhetorical and cultural analysis to provide students with the tools to think and write analytically. English 1110 fosters elements of effective analytical reading and writing, such as the attempt to persuade, to convey information, and so on, that all academic disciplines emphasize. Students will write three assignments, do weekly informal writing, and participate in small group and large group discussions. Required Texts: Making Sense: A Real-World Rhetorical Reader, 3rd edition. On order at SBS Student Book Store (High Street, 1 blk. south of Long’s).

English 2201Selected Works of British Literature: Medieval-1800Hamlin, [email protected]

“Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed.”

-- John Steinbeck

“Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.”

-- C.S. Lewis

Literature is how cultures dream, and writers are the dreamers of our collective hopes and fears, loves and losses, fantasies and

realities. Literature is also the womb out of which language is born. This course will explore the first thousand years of literature in English, from Beowulf’s battle with Grendel and the dragon to Gulliver’s shipwreck in the land of the tiny Lilliputians. We will read some of the most influential writers in the history of English literature: Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. We will read poems, plays, and stories about sex, gender, and desire, rage and destruction, wisdom and godliness, and politics and power. We will spend time in the company of priests and playwrights, knights and nuns, angels and shepherdesses, even God and Satan. Major works (whole or in parts) will include Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, The Faerie Queene, The Duchess of Malfi, Paradise Lost, and Gulliver’s Travels. Course requirements will include attendance at weekly lectures, participation in discussion sections, a midterm and final exam, and two short close reading assignments. Required Text: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th edition, vol. 1.

English 2202British Literature 1800 - PresentThomas [email protected]

This course will provide a survey of literature composed within the British world-system from the turn of the 19th century to the present day. We will attend closely to the formal and stylistic developments of different periods of literary history—romanticism, realism, modernism, postmodernism—with an eye on the political and historical antagonisms that accompany and underwrite these aesthetic innovations. Course requirements include a few quizzes, a midterm, and a final.

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mailto:[email protected]




English 2202HSelected Works of British Literature 1800 to the PresentSimmons, [email protected]

English 2202H is a course designed to introduce students to the major periods in British literature from 1800 to the present, namely, the Romantic, Victorian, Modern, and (very briefly) the Postmodern periods, through the study of representative works and central ideas. The course provides a historical and contextual foundation for advanced-level study of British literature and also fulfills the General Education Literature and Global Studies categories.

A loose theme for this course will be British literature’s representation of the tension between a rationalist understanding of the material world and the world of imagination and feeling—or as Jane Austen expressed it, Sense and Sensibility, the title of the first novel that we will read; or Fact and Fancy, as Dickens’s characters call the distinction in Hard Times. We will also touch upon major literary and aesthetic concerns such as the sublime and picturesque; realism; the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic movements; and stream of consciousness narration. We will read poetry, fiction, and a little non-fiction prose and drama by authors such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Austen, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, Dickens, Wilde, Joyce, Woolf, Lawrence, Beckett, and Rushdie.

Requirements. 2202H differs from the non-Honors version in being taught not as a lecture but as a seminar; that is, while there will be a lecturing component, group discussion is just as important. Careful reading in advance, regular attendance, and active participation are expected. To introduce the Victorian, Modern, and Postmodern periods, class members will do some background research on aspects of history, life, and attitudes towards literature of the time

period and give ten-minute informative presentations to the group. The other main requirements are two papers; quizzes; and completion of reading questions in advance of class.

Required Texts.Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (Oxford World’s Classics)Charles Dickens, Hard Times, edited by Jeff Nunokawa and Gage C. McWeeny (Longman Cultural Editions) The Longman Anthology of British Literature 2nd compact edition volume 2B, ed. David Damrosch et al (Pearson Longman).

English 2220HHonors Introduction to ShakespeareLuke [email protected]

Ben Jonson famously praised Shakespeare as being "not for an age, but for all time." In some sense he was both. He produced plays we still read and watch today and in that sense seems as much "for" our time as "for" his own; and yet his plays were intimately embedded in the literary, political, cultural and material fabric of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century English life. In this course we'll try to keep an eye on both the fact on his continuing appeal and his engagement with the times in which he wrote. We'll read plays by Shakespeare in the major dramatic genres -- comedy, history, tragedy and what later came to be called romance -- as well as some of his poems. Requirements: Several short papers, a longer paper, some ancillary research exercises, a class presentation, and (possibly) a final exam. Text: The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, et al. 3rd ed. (2015).

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English 2220Introduction to ShakespeareRichard [email protected]

This course offers an introduction to Shakespeare's mastery of four genres: romantic or festive comedy (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night), chronicle history (1 Henry 4, Henry 5), tragedy (Hamlet, Othello, King Lear) and romance/tragicomedy (The Tempest). We will look at these plays in the context of Shakespeare's times and of the society and theatre for which he wrote, but with reference to modern film treatments where these are illuminating. (The schedule of plays may alter if the opportunity arises to see live Shakespeare performance). Students will be encouraged to pursue appropriate secondary reading. Assessment will be based on two papers (3/5 sides), plus quizzes, class participation and a final. (Anyone who receives a B+ or better on either of the papers may opt to do a long paper -10-12 sides - in lieu of the final.)

Required Texts: You should have modern, annotated texts of all the plays specified above, either in individual copies (Folger, Oxford, Cambridge, Bedford are all good) or a Complete Shakespeare (Riverside, Bevington or Pelican are best: AVOID NORTON). The Necessary Shakespeare (ed. Bevington) is a good compromise, slightly cheaper and manageable to carry. The point is to have texts which, with introductions, annotations etc. enable you to make an informed reading of the plays.

English 2260Introduction to PoetryDavid [email protected]

This course is intended as an introduction to major poems and poets in the English language, and will examine poems in historical, literary historical and broader cultural contexts. We will be concerned especially with poetic form and craft and the many and various uses of such forms as sonnets, ballads, odes, blank and rhymed verse and so on, and we will also focus on the crafting of voice, tone, imagery, sound, and rhythm. The textbook will be R.S. Gwynn’s Poetry: A Pocket Anthology, seventh edition, and will be supplemented by additional readings on Carmen. Requirements: attendance and participation, 3 short critical essays (3-5 pages each) and frequent in-class writing.

English 2260Introduction to Poetry: Ohio PoetsMolly [email protected]

This course explores the flourishing of poetry by writers with a deep connection to Ohio. From James Wright and Paul Lawrence Dunbar to Rita Dove and Vijay Seshadri, we will investigate the cultural corners of the state through the work of its acclaimed poets. How do these poems teach us to understand, enjoy, and appreciate poetry? And how does a better understanding of poetry help us to see this particular place in new ways? Beginning in the nineteenth century up to the present day, we will explore various trends in poetic form and gain a sophisticated understanding of poetic terms. Connections to Ohio will work as a lens with which to view larger

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developments in American poetry, while at the same time we will investigate the ways the state’s particular geography and history foster literary experimentation and engagement.

English 2261HIntroduction to FictionPrinz, [email protected]

English 2261H will be taught this semester as an introduction to 20th century fiction, American and British. We will discuss the elements of fiction and read broadly in the genres of short stories and novels. Longer works will be considered: Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury,” Morrison’s “Beloved,” Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go,” Jennifer Egan’s “A Visit from the Goon Squad” or some other recent text. Additional and/or alternative readings may be assigned. Course Requirements: a participation grade including attendance, discussions, and class presentations; two exams (midterm and final); two short papers (5 pages each). Writing text will be, “They Say, I Say,” by Graff.

English 2261Fantasy Fiction set in Oxford: An introduction to the Study of FictionSebastian [email protected]

This course will constitute ak study of fantasy fiction set in Oxford, or written by Oxfordians from the Victorian period to the present day. We will read works by C. S. Lewis (The Magician's Nephew), Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass), J. R. R. Tolkien (The Return of the King, Book 2), Philip Pullman (The

Golden Compass), Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows), Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited), and Edmund Crispin (The Moving Toyshop). There will be 2 papers and occasional quizzes - no midterm or final exams.

English 2261Introduction to Fiction: True Stories: Lies in FictionCariello, Matthew [email protected]

This course will be based on the idea that fiction lies. Over the course of the semester, we’ll to apply this idea to a number of works in order to see how well the premise stands up. Each of the texts we’ll view or read has at its center a character or characters unwilling or unable to deal directly with the events of the story. You will be asked to examine these stories to see how the lies that are told indirectly reveal truths larger than could be directly communicated.

Course texts: Books: J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Clinton Portis’ True Grit; Films: Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon,” Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” Christopher Nolan’s “Memento”; and numerous stories posted on Carmen.

English 2263Introduction to FilmDavid [email protected]

This course will explore the formal and technological means through which stories are told on film, and how those techniques interact with the film industry and the viewers on which it relies. Among other things, we’ll consider casting, set decoration, cinematography,

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editing, sound, special effects, genre, financing, distribution, fandom, and the star system. Throughout, our emphasis will be on bringing out and building upon the skills as a viewer that you’ve already developed over two decades or more of watching.

Likely viewings include The Avengers, Bonnie and Clyde, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Godzilla, Goodfellas, Juno, some Looney Tunes cartoons, Kick Ass, Marie Antoinette, Moonrise Kingdom, Ocean’s Eleven, The Philadelphia Story, Silence of the Lambs, Singing in the Rain, and Some Like It Hot.

Course requirements will include a viewing journal, three take-home exams, and regular participation in our discussions, both in lecture and in recitation.

English 2265Writing of Fiction ISo, [email protected]

This course will focus on the craft of writing fiction with an emphasis on the short story. To understand fiction writing, students will analyze the craft techniques in the works of established authors. In particular, we will examine characterization, plot and structure, scene and summary, points of view, voice, setting, and dialogue. Students will then employ these techniques in a series of short creative assignments and in the creation and revision of a longer piece of work. Class discussion will center on students’ original works, as well as the works of published authors. Readings may include such authors as: George Saunders, Junot Diaz, Jennifer Egan, and ZZ Packer.

English 2265Writing Fiction IRisinger, Memory [email protected]

This course seeks curious, discerning, diligent, and courteous students who are interested in the craft of writing fiction. We will read. We will write. We will eavesdrop. We will stare. We will talk. We will listen. We will do these things because they contribute to “the writing self” and we’ll spend the semester exploring that creative self while also examining the mechanisms of good fiction.

Our Wednesday and Friday class time will be divided between writing exercises and discussions of craft. Readings will consist of mostly short stories and novel excerpts. I might throw in the occasional poem. Expect surprises. Expect to talk a lot, participate in writing exercises, give a presentation, and write a short story. We will use the second half of the semester to workshop your stories as a class.

If you are seeking an honest creative community this course is for you. Thomas Mann said, “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” While this course may not make writing less difficult, we will work together to make the blank page a little less intimidating. Text: Jerome Stern, Making Shapely Fiction; other readings will be available on Carmen.

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English 2265Writing of Fiction ILeven, [email protected]

This course will focus on the craft of writing fiction with an emphasis on the short story. To understand fiction writing, students will analyze the craft techniques in the works of established authors. In particular, we will examine characterization, plot and structure, scene and summary, points of view, voice, setting, and dialogue. Students will then employ these techniques in a series of short creative assignments and in the creation and revision of a longer piece of work. Class discussion will center on students’ original works, as well as the works of published authors.

English 2265The Writing of Fiction IBryant, [email protected]

This course will focus on learning the craft of writing fiction through the critical reading of short stories. In the first half of the semester, we will be working on learning to read as a writer. We will spend each week discussing how the selected stories demonstrate such tools as plot, structure, characterization, point of view, dialogue, and voice. At the end of some class periods, we may complete short, in-class writing assignments in order to engage and practice some of the techniques seen in the contemporary short fiction we will be critically reading and discussing that day. Our readings will include these contemporary writers: Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Raymond Carver, Sandra Cisneros, Danielle Evans, Richard Ford, Roxane Gay, Amy Hempel, Shirley Jackson, Kelly Link, Elizabeth

McCracken, Steven Milhauser, Thisbe Nissen, Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O’Connor, ZZ Packer, Stacey Richter, George Saunders, Lysley Tenorio, and Kevin Wilson. In the second half of the semester, we will spend our class time focusing on your own, original fiction.

English 2266Writing of Poetry 1Harvey, [email protected]

In this class, we will read and write and discuss poems. Poems can work in many ways, and we will experiment wildly. In addition to studying the history of poetry, we will look at other forms of art—music, film, comedy, photography, painting—and think about what poets can learn from them. There is no textbook for this class, but you will be expected to complete short readings each week. No prior experience with poetry is needed.

English 2266Writing Poetry I Barnhart, [email protected]

This course is designed to introduce students to the practice of writing, work-shopping, and revising poetry. The majority of class time will be spent in workshop, which means the majority of the coursework will be the writing of one's own poetry as well as earnest critical engagement with the poetry of your classmates. Students will be expected to write roughly one poem per week in response to variety of prompts. Our work and discussion in the

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classroom will be informed by our readings of the work of established contemporary and canonical poets. We will also be looking at the world of publishing poetry, with students presenting on a published collection or literary journal of their choosing.

English 2267Introduction to Creative Writing Quiñones, [email protected]

This course will provide a foundation in the writing of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. We will begin the course by learning how to read and analyze poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from the perspective of a writer, and aim to implement their respective tools to improve our own craft. Therefore, we will also spend significant time reading and discussing (workshopping) student stories, essays, and poetry in the safe space of the classroom. Half of our meetings will focus on three units: poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction, and elements of their craft. The other half will focus on constructively critiquing student writing, so that they may compose a final portfolio consisting of both prose and poetry. Students need not have any experience in creative writing prior to this course.

English 2268Writing Creative Nonfiction IBomsta, [email protected]

This course will introduce students to creative nonfiction, with a special focus on the personal essay. Students will read a wide range of short creative nonfiction works and write two essays, both of which will be workshopped by peers.

English 2270HIntroduction to Folklore (Honors)Noyes, [email protected]

Folklore is the culture that people make for themselves. Not all of us are specialists, but all of us tell stories, shape our environments, cultivate communities, and take care of our souls and our bodies. The forms of folklore circulate from person to person and group to group, adapting to every change of situation; they lend themselves to a wide array of social purposes. We'll look at a range of genres from both US and international settings: folktales, legends, jokes, song and dance, religious and holiday custom, foodways, craft, and domestic art. You’ll conduct a small field project of your choice and learn the basics of these folkloristic skills:

· Interpreting culture. Learn how to “read” a wide variety of cultural messages according to their own conventions and in their social context.· Field observation and ethnography. Learn how to size up an unfamiliar situation, participate in it appropriately, and describe it in writing.· Interviewing and rigorous listening. Learn how to understand what someone is telling you without imposing your own agenda on the conversation.· Understanding diversity. Learn how communities in the US and internationally develop distinctive forms of expression that can foster strong identities, exercise social control, provoke conflict, and build bridges.· Connecting vernacular and codified expression. Learn about the interchanges and miscommunications among communities, professionals, and institutions.

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Prereq: Honors standing, and English 1110 (110) or equiv. Not open to students with credit for CompStd 2350, English 2270 (270), or 2270H. GE cultures and ideas course. Counts for the Folklore Minor.

English 2275Thematic Approaches to Literature: Plagues, Epidemics, and OutbreaksConatser, [email protected]

"dead!—slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared…slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth…These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things—taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle…By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers…For neither do men live nor die in vain."

— H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (1898) Despite Wells’s affirmation of human birthright, the sudden spread of disease powerfully leads us to rethink our place in the world. Far beyond the questions of quarantine and cure, epidemics bring uncertainty upon the values at the core of our cultures, histories, institutions and traditions. What can and should we sacrifice in the name of survival? How do our infected, infectious bodies, our material physiology, or what literary historian Alan Bewell calls our “biomedical identities” affect our understanding of community, responsibility, personhood, will, mind, or soul? Moreover,

widespread disease presents unique problems and opportunities for writers. Form, genre, and style influence how audiences perceive large-scale suffering, and authors must navigate the ethical considerations of how literature can and should attest to the lived experience of disease as an integral part of the human condition. From medieval plagues to 21st-century outbreaks, we’ll focus on how authors write about disease and how they use disease to write about the world around us. We’ll explore many different forms and genres, such as civic and scientific reports, journalism, memoir, fiction, poetry, drama, comics, visual compositions, television, movies, and games. We’ll look to countries such as the United States, England, Russia, Italy, the Czech Republic, and French Algeria. From bubonic plague, cholera, yellow fever, tuberculosis, smallpox, influenza, AIDS, radioactive substances, and engineered toxins, writers and artists challenge us not only to ask what or how disease means but also to consider the implications of those meanings. Coursework may include some or all of the following: brief response papers, midterm exams, creative research project.English 2276Arts of PersuasionNan [email protected]

English 2276 is an introduction to the theory and practice of rhetorical analysis or the study of argumentation. During this class, we will study principles of persuasive writing, speaking, reading, and viewing in order to understand how these forms of communication make arguments that change our ideas, beliefs, and behavior. We will apply methods of rhetorical criticism to historical and popular texts including advertising, literature, films, speeches, songs, editorials, and popular images to better understand how texts like these shape our culture. Protest movements will also be studied as

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well as the persuasive strategies of national politicians. Assignments include short response paragraphs, participation in small and large group discussions, a midterm, and a final project. Text: Sonja K. Foss, Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration & Practice. Third Edition. Waveland Press, Inc.: Long Grove, Illinois, 2004.

English 2279Introduction to Writing, Rhetoric, and LiteracyRoger [email protected]

English 2279 is an introduction to three fields that are the focus of one of the Department’s concentrations in the English major: Rhetoric, Writing, and Literacy. The course will cover readings in each area, allowing students to become familiar with key issues and research topics in each field. Students will complete a project or write a paper on a subject of their interest in each area that is covered in the course.

English 2280The English BibleHannibal [email protected]

The Bible contains some of the weirdest and most wonderful literature you will ever read, and there is certainly no book that has had a greater influence on English and American literature from Beowulf to Paradise Lost, Pilgrim’s Progress to The Chronicles of Narnia, Whitman’s Song of Myself to Morrison’s Song of Solomon. We will read a selection of biblical books in order to gain some appreciation of the Bible’s wide range of literary genres, forms, styles, and topics. Our discussion will include the nature of biblical

narrative and characterization, the function of prophecy and its relation to history, the peculiar nature of biblical poetry, so-called Wisdom literature, anomalous books like Job and The Song of Songs (including the historical process of canonization that made them “biblical” and the kinds of interpretation that have been used to make them less strange), the relationship between (in traditional Christian terms) the Old and New Testaments (including typology, the symbolic linking of characters, events, themes, and images in the books before and after the Incarnation), and the unity (or lack thereof) of the Bible as a whole. As occasion warrants, we will also look at some of the diverse ways the Bible has been read and interpreted––the stranger the better––by poets and writers, artists and film-makers over the past millennia. Do note: this is NOT a course in religion, but rather an English course on the Bible as a literary work. Any and all faiths, or none, are welcome, and none will be privileged. Texts: The English Bible: King James Version (2 vols.), ed. Herbert Marks (1) and Gerald Hammond and Austin Busch (2), Norton Critical Edition

Course requirements: Evaluation will be based on active participation in class discussion and activities, regular reading quizzes, two short essays, a mid-term test, and a final exam.

English 2282

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Introduction to Queer Studies: Queer & Trans Micro-Politics of the Everyday Chen, Jian [email protected]

This seminar explores queer and transgender politics from the emergence of counter-cultural protest, critique, and community building in the late 1960s to the networked and embedded practices, relationships, and identities of the first decades of the twenty-first century. As a derogatory term turned back against those using it, queer has been claimed as a perversely “negative” descriptive that rejects common-sense ideas of normality, while also creating different ways of desiring, relating, and being in the world. The course tracks the shifting social conditions that continue to energize queer dis-identification and ways of living as political strategies that work through cultural transformation. At the same time, the course resists the increasing codification of queer-ness through racial, class, and gender mainstreaming by focusing on the people of color, transgender and gender nonconforming, transnational, and economically dispossessed origins of queer politics. In particular, the embodied—or even biological—strategies of transgender and gender nonconforming of color and transnational politics are treated not just as newly emerging practices and movements. They are considered “foundational’ to queer politics and to the potential present and future of social transformation.

Course requirements may include an in-class presentation, regular participation in a course blog, in-class midterm, and final paper project. Course materials may include work by Janet Mock, Lovemme Corazón, Ryka Aoki, Mia McKenzie, Nayan Shah, José Esteban Muñoz, Kobena Mercer, Judith “Jack” Halberstam and Del LaGrace Volcano, Michel Foucault, Mel Y. Chen, Beatriz Preciado,

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, C. Riley Snorton, and Lisa Duggan and also film screenings. The course will fulfill requirements towards English, Women’s Gender & Sexuality Studies, Sexuality Studies, and Asian American Studies majors and minors. (Check with your program/department for more details.)

English 2290Colonial and US Literature to 1865Hewitt, [email protected]

This course introduces students to some of the crucial England language texts from North America in the period before the Civil War. We will explore writers working in nonfiction, fiction, and poetry according to a broad array of historical, cultural, and literary concerns, including colonialism; settlement; encounters with native peoples; political revolutions; African slavery; aesthetic conventions; and philosophical movements. Course responsibilities will include regular quizzes, short papers, a final examination, and mandatory attendance.

English 2367.01SThe Literacy Narratives of Black Columbus: Social Justice and Political ActivismSelfe, [email protected]

In this active, field-based course, students work on teams to record the life-history narratives of citizens from Black Columbus neighborhoods, focusing specifically on stories having to do with literacy practices occurring in the home, church, community, and

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schools, and those stories involving some aspect of social justice, political activism.

Participants read about the importance of undertaking life-history projects (Angrosino, Selfe, Borland, Lummis, Portelli), with a particular focus on literacy, social justice, and political activism. Representatives of community-based organizations will be involved as guest speakers to talk about community participation and possible sites for collecting literacy narratives. Guest speakers who have participated in similar projects will also be invited to speak to the class.

Class members learn about interviewing techniques, look at/listen to life-history/literacy narrative recordings, and reflect on such texts as a medium of social activism.

Participants also learn how to use digital audio recorders, digital still cameras, and digital video cameras to record the stories of community members in Black Columbus neighborhoods, and all participants will conduct a series of life-history/literacy narrative interviews with members of the community. The course culminates in a public reception at which literacy narratives will be presented.

All students, community members, and volunteers are welcome in this class. For questions, please contact Prof. Cynthia L. Selfe <[email protected]>

English 2367.01Language, Identity, and Culture in the U.S. Experience - Critical Analysis of Video GamesHarvat, [email protected]

Video games are increasingly becoming an integral part of American culture. Not only do most Americans play games, but more and more people are beginning to value them as cultural artifacts worthy of serious study. In this composition course, in addition to playing games, we will also learn how to play them critically. Using an analytical approach, together we will play, discuss, and write about a variety of games, both independent and mainstream. We will explore major concepts in the growing field of game studies, such as interactivity, choice, space, narrative, representation, etc., and will hone our skills as academic writers by engaging with these concepts on the page. Assignments will include short response papers, a critical game review, and a final analytical research paper. No prior experience with video games is expected, and students are not required to own a game system to register.

English 2367.01Language, Identity, and Culture in the U.S. Experience: Critical Analysis of Video GamesSweet, [email protected]

Video games are increasingly becoming an integral part of American culture. Not only do most Americans play games, but more and more people are beginning to value them as cultural artifacts worthy of serious study. In this composition course, in addition to playing games, we will also learn how to play them critically. Using an analytical approach, together we will play, discuss, and write

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about a variety of games, both independent and mainstream. We will explore major concepts in the growing field of game studies, such as interactivity, choice, space, narrative, representation, etc., and will hone our skills as academic writers by engaging with these concepts on the page. No prior experience with video games is expected, and students are not required to own a game system to register.

English 2367.01Language, Identity, and Culture in the U.S. Experience: Disability in LiteratureSydlik, [email protected]

In this course, we will work toward the second-year writing objectives by examining disability in literature. We will review the basic concepts of Disability Studies from critics such as Ronald Berger, Brenda Brueggemann, and Simi Linton. Writers whose work we look at include but are not limited to Raymond Carver, Anne Finger, Flannery O’Connor. Through several short papers, a final project, and an annotated bibliography, we will apply the principles of Disability Studies and attend to literary features such as metaphors, characterization, narrative devices, diction, historical context. Our concept of "literature" includes traditional print texts such as novels, short stories, and poetry, but includes texts from different media such as film, television, theater, and music. We will engage in critical conversations with each other and other scholars to discover the unexamined assumptions about disability (and bodies generally) embedded in these texts. In other words, you will learn how to say what texts leave unsaid, to state the non-obvious, to make their implicit ideas about disability explicit. You will find these skills useful not only for literary analysis, but most academic and professional writing.

English 2367.01Language, Identity, and Culture in the U.S. Experience - Disabilities StudiesIwertz, [email protected]

In this writing course, we will work toward second-year writing program objectives by engaging with critical and rhetorical movements within disability as a social mark of stigma on the body and mind. We will review basic concepts within Disability Studies from scholars such as Brenda Brueggemann, Jay Dolmage, Margaret Price, Melanie Yergeau, and Stephanie Kerschbaum. Furthermore, we will engage with these concepts through reflective and critical writing on the significance of technology to the definition of disability, the relationship of new media composition and analysis to disability, rhetorics of accommodation, politics of representation, as well as current debates in the fields of disability studies and composition. Specific topics will include: accessibility in composition; Universal Design; multimodal composition as a form of inclusive writing; visual rhetorics of disability in popular culture (including short literary pieces, film, and photography); disability and performance, as well as social media advocacy and activism. The skills you develop in this class will help you not only become better writers and critics, but they will also allow you to critically analyze academic, professional, and ethical engagements with accommodation and accessibility. Furthermore, you will understand the importance for considerations of the body in contributing to effective and rhetorical composition, as well develop skills in creating accessible multimodal compositions. Required Course Texts:

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• Andrea A. Lunsford: “Writing in Action”• Graham Pullin: “Design Meets Disability”• Beth Haller: “Representing Disability in an Ableist World”

Course Assignments:

• Blog Contributions • Artifact Analysis and Presentation • Disability and Accessible Design Assignment • Research-Based Multimodal Project

English 2367.02HLiterature in the US Experience: Reading US Protest Literature after FergusonJani, [email protected]

The first goal of this version of English 2367.02—“Reading US Protest Literature after Ferguson”—is to allow students to hone their expository writing skills in relation to the long history of US protest literature. We will explore the literature of protest—including novels and short stories but also essays and memoirs—not as marginal to the US experience but as central to it. Writing that presents the struggles of racial, sexual, and ethnic minorities, or that illuminates the oppression of women and workers, or that criticizes the foreign policies of the US government will be examined in order to challenge our understanding of American experience.

These skills will be further developed by the second goal of the course, which is to foreground the moment in which we are reading this protest literature: a months-long explosion of grassroots protest and struggle against anti-Black racism and police brutality.

We will therefore highlight questions of race and Black identity—and show the intersections of race with gender, sexuality, class, nation and other social categories. Besides offering excellent writing and pushing students’ ideas, the Ferguson moment will emphasize that we always read and write in a context, and that awareness of that context is essential for clarity and precision.

This class fulfills two GE requirements:(1) GE Diversity: Social Diversity in the US: Level 2(2) GE Writing and Communication: Level 2.

Writers: Alexie, Davis, Hamid, Mock, Morrison; anthology by Trodd. Requirements: 3 papers (plus drafts), participation, in-class assignments.

English 3364Special Topics in Popular Culture: Stand Up Comedy and the Social DramaMartinez, [email protected]

This course will examine the evolution of stand-up comedy from its rise in the late 1950s through its contemporary practice. Stand-up comedy has been provided a social space in which politically and culturally sensitive issues have been freely examined and “performed.” We will view the work of comedians Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Sarah Silverman, Robert Klein, George Lopez, Amy Schumer, Chris Rock, and others with an eye towards how our understanding of race, class, gender, and sexuality is mirrored, and even shaped on the comic stage. The course will incorporate the work of critics and theorists writing on the political uses of comedy in confronting power. There will be a weekly journal, viewing worksheets, a midterm, and one essay as the

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primary assignments. Students taking this course should be prepared to engage with language and ideas that may, and probably will, be offensive. But part of the rationale for this course is to come to a clearer understanding of how “offensiveness” functions in the social drama and how “we” decide what is in fact, offensive."

English 3372Science Fiction and/or FantasyMcHale, [email protected]

If you regularly read science fiction, watch sf films and consider yourself a knowledgeable fan, or if you only occasionally read or watch sf, or if you never read sf and seldom watch sf films – whichever of these categories you belong to, this course is for you! Its purpose is to give you tools for thinking, speaking and writing about sf. Other versions of this course emphasize the fantasy end of the speculative fiction spectrum, but this version focuses on the science fiction end. Our main concern won’t be sf’s history, its marketing and readership, or even its ideas – though all of these things will come into the picture. Our main concern will be how sf is made – its form. We’ll explore questions such as, what distinguishes science fiction from other types of fiction? How are science fiction novels (and films) constructed? How do we get from sentences on a page (or shots in a film) to worlds in the imagination? Specific topics will include the future, the alien and world-building. What does it mean to imagine the future? When we try to do so, are we really just imagining versions of the present? What about aliens – are they really just versions of ourselves, after all – ourselves in a funhouse mirror – or can we imagine something that is genuinely, radically not-us? What is involved in building a world? Why go to the trouble of building one, when there is a well-made and perfectly usable one all around us? What happens when the worlds of sf

begin to unravel, and why would someone build a world that fell apart?

Readings. All of our readings will come from a convenient anthology, Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction, edited by Leigh Grossman, available in book and e-book editions.

Assignments: Students will turn in seven very brief (2-3 page) reflections on one of the works discussed during the previous two weeks. You will develop one or more of these brief biweekly reflections into a longer (7-10 page) final paper, due during exam week. The grades on your weekly reflections will each be worth 10% of your final grade, and the grade on your final paper will constitute 30%.

English 3372Science Fiction and FantasyThe Fire Next Time: The Apocalypse in SF and FantasyHeaphy, [email protected]

"Science Fiction is “… a mechanism through which we explore humanity and modernity. … what it is to be real; what it is to be human.” (Duncan, “The Spelunkers of Speculative Fiction.” Boomtron.com. 2 March 2010.)

Science Fiction isn’t just zap guns and interstellar rockets. The broad term “Science Fiction” covers a wide range of fascinating stories that tease and enlighten us by demonstrating that the past could have been different; the present isn't what it seems; and the future will not be what you're expecting. This course will explore the strategies involved in reading and writing science fiction, examine the genre's common themes and metaphors, and consider the

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similarities and differences between the two great genres of imaginative writing: SF and Fantasy.

The theme for this course is specifically the subgenre of SF known as post-apocalyptic fiction -- attempts to imagine events before, during and after “the end of the world as we know it.” From the earliest days of modern SF, stories that imagine the destruction of everything we know and hold dear have been used as powerful allegories of the modern condition. Since the nuclear age, this has evolved into one of the most powerful subgenres in science fiction; in the early years of the 21st century tales of doom and gloom – and survival --have proved especially popular, for reasons which we will discuss. The roll call of modern day Horsemen of the Apocalypse includes (but is not limited to!) nuclear war, pandemics, alien invasion, and environmental disasters: post-apocalyptic science fiction has allowed writers and readers to think us through our deepest fears.

No prior knowledge of Science Fiction is assumed; all that’s required is a willingness to jump in and experience the genre on its own terms. By examining major, influential SF works in their literary, social, and cultural contexts, this course offers students an opportunity to enhance their communication skills, to promote discussion and critical thinking, and to discover different ways to think about our past, our present, our future -- and ourselves. And yes, there will be a few zap guns and interstellar rockets, too.

The novels we will be studying (and current approx. prices) will include • Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? $9.75 • Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Liebowitz $10 • H.G. Wells, War of the Worlds $8

• Strugatsky Brothers, Roadside Picnic $9 • Kevin Brockmeier, A Brief History of the Dead $12 In addition there will be short stories by authors such as Ray Bradbury, Octavia E. Butler, M. John Harrison, and James Tiptree Jr., among others, posted to Carmen.

Requirements will include regular participation in class discussion, regular attendance, reading quizzes, three response papers (2-3 pages) and a final exam.

English 3398Introduction to Literary Studies Fletcher, [email protected]

This section of 3398 is designed to prepare students for the Creative Writing track by exploring some of the practical methods that poets, novelists, essayists, playwrights, screenwriters and other authors use to analyze literature. Particular attention will be paid to formal techniques such as character, plot, world-building, language, tone, action, line breaks, sound and rhythm. In keeping with a student-centered approach, readings will be flexible, but will range from Sappho to Breaking Bad. Assignments will include a formal analysis, a literary manifesto, and a plan for a new work.

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English 3398Introduction to Literary StudiesWarhol, [email protected]

This class introduces students to the genres and modes that are studied in the English Department of the 21st century. Genres to be covered include lyric poetry (Renaissance sonnets and 19th-century dramatic monologues), comics, graphic memoir, slave narrative, novel, film, performance, TV sitcoms, TV drama, digital texts, and web series; modes include comic, tragic, romantic, melodramatic, and epic.

Readings will include *Fun Home* by Alison Bechdel; *Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl* by Harriet Jacobs; *The Color Purple* by Alice Walker; poems by Shakespeare, Donne, Blake, Keats, Dickinson, EB Browning, R Browning, TS Eliot, E St. Vincent Millay, and Margaret Atwood; Tom Tykwer's *Run Lola Run*; examples of digital poetry; and selected episodes of TV sitcoms, complex-TV drama, and web series.

Requirements:1. Write a 250-word response to each reading assignment in answer to a question posted on Carmen, due at the beginning of every class. To be collected at unannounced intervals in lieu of quizzes.2. Write a 4-6 page paper in draft and final form.3. Attend class regularly and participate actively in discussions. 4. Present one 10-15 minute oral “prolusion” on an assigned text.5. Take a midterm exam requiring you to identify and close-read passages from assigned texts. (There will be no final)

English 3398Introduction to Literary Studies Jones, [email protected]

This section of English 3398 combines exercises in analytical reading with formal and informal writing assignments. The emphasis throughout is on the acquisition and honing of essential skills that many upper-division English courses will require of major and minors in the discipline. These skills include “close reading,” attention to textual forms (especially poetry and prose fiction), and the use of critical theory and historical research as aids to understanding and writing about literature. Our readings for the class will come from a wide range of historical periods and genres, with three extended units on the short fiction of Flannery O’Connor, on Stevenson’s short novel, _The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, and on Stoker’s _Dracula_. Graded components will include four formal essays, one formal research presentation, various informal written assignments, and regular class attendance and participation.

English 3398Introduction to Literary StudiesKnapp, [email protected]

This course is designed to give you the tools you will need in upper level English courses here at OSU. It has two objectives. On the one hand this course will provide an opportunity to work on your writing with an eye towards the particular expectations involved in literary analysis. One of your goals for this course should be understanding the conventions of writing in literary analysis and working to develop your ability to write well within that context. On the other

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hand, this course is also meant to provide some exposure to the major forms of cultural activity that are studied in the English Department: poetry, fiction, drama, and film.

Readings will include:Helen Vendler, Poems, Poets, Poetry (3rd ed.)Shakespeare, Hamlet (Norton Critical Edition, ed. Miola)Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies

English 3398Introduction to Literary StudiesConroy, [email protected]

What is this thing called "text?" The chief thing this course is designed to teach you is, in effect, literary criticism: drawing implied meaning from writing or other cultural occasion (e.g., film) and putting together an argument on behalf of your interpretation. In this course, we'll share with you examples (still to come) taken from all of the major genres: prose fiction, poetry, and the drama. In turn, you'll be expected to come up with your own argument tracing some underlying symbolic structure in one instance from each type. There will also be oral reports, and workshop sessions devoted to looking over and critiquing work in progress.

English 3398Introduction to Literary StudiesMitchell, [email protected]

This class builds on the writing skills that students already possess by offering several opportunities to submit essays that put forth clear, thesis-driven arguments. We will cover several theoretical approaches to literature. In many cases, we will examine F. Scott Fitzgerald's THE GREAT GATSBY through different lenses in order to get a feel for how these approaches illuminate the richness of a single text. To further test the theories introduced, we will read other literary forms, including drama and poetry. Also, students enrolling in this section of 3398 should welcome the opportunity to practice their public speaking skills.

REQUIRED READING will include F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today, 3rd edition.

English 3398Introduction to the Study of LiteratureHigginbotham, [email protected]

This is a course about what we read, why we read, and how we read. As an introduction to the critical study of literature, this class aims to help students gain the skills necessary to succeed as English majors and minors, including close reading, understanding genre, working with poetry, and writing English essays.

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English 3405Special Topics in Professional Communication - Writing about FoodBierschenk, [email protected]

In “Writing about Food,” you will discuss and practice different types of food writing to increase your stylistic range, your technological proficiencies, and your facility with professional genres. You will practice writing about food for different audiences and in different formats. You will accommodate food-science research for non-expert readers, describe food-related risks, create precise and usable instructions, and practice food-entertainment writing through blog posts, restaurant reviews, book proposals, and other genres. Knowledge of or proficiency in science or the culinary arts is not required.

English 3465Intermediate Creative Writing: Special Topics in Fiction - Frame & PerspectiveCullen, [email protected]

This course will invite you to write and analyze fiction that experiments with frame and perspective. Choices that writers make surrounding frame and perspective help us to understand their ideas about why people tell stories and what reading and writing accomplishes for people. We will look at the use of frame narratives, unreliable narrators, and stories in the form of other kinds of documents.

We will read stories and novels by writers including Joseph Conrad, Italo Calvino, and Helen Oyeyemi. You will be asked to experiment

in your own writing that demonstrates thinking about frame and perspective.

English 3465Special Topics in Fiction Writing: The Role of PlaceEvans, [email protected]

This intermediate fiction-writing course builds on the skills acquired in English 2265. In addition to focusing on craft elements such as dialogue, characterization, voice, structure, and plot, this class will also examine the role of place within short story writing and the ways in which characters inhabit and respond to setting. Students will be required to complete a short craft paper and two short stories with an emphasis on world building. Short writing exercises will also be assigned, both in and out of class, and readings may include such authors as Andre Dubus, Elizabeth Strout, Ron Hansen, Alice Munro, Louise Erdrich, and Junot Diaz.

English 3465Intermediate Creative Writing: Special Topics in FictionGuidry, [email protected]

In this intermediate fiction-writing class, students will turn in two short stories for workshop and will revise one of these by the end of the semester. We'll also read and discuss published works, revisiting elements of craft introduced in English 2265. In particular, we'll be paying special attention to character development and significant detail. Readings may include work by Julie Otsuka, Jhumpa Lahiri, Lysley Tenorio, Tove Jansson, and others.

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English 3466Intermediate Poetry: Personas, Performance & the Page on the StageWeiss, [email protected]

In this course on persona and performance, we will look at how poems live beyond the page. What voices do we unlock when we delve into personas? How, with our field of poetics, our voices and our bodies, can we best translate these creations to the page and to the stage?

Finding inspiration from film characters, strangers, family members and celebrities, we will explore the many forms of language. Watching performance artists and stand-up comedians, we will examine how other artists create full, memorable characters with emotional stakes on stage, in audio recordings or on YouTube. Enlisting actors and fellow writers as “cover bands” to perform our own work, we will learn how a poem is rewritten every time it finds a voice.

Possible poets and performers on our reading/viewing/listening list include: Frank Bidart, Rives, Anne Carson, Rachel McKibbens, Kim Addonizio, Robert Pinsky, Mike Meyers, Charles Bukowski, Miranda July, Allen Ginsberg, Andrea Gibson, Patricia Lockwood, Patti Smith, Frank O’Hara, Patricia Smith, Lana Del Rey, John Berryman, Louis C.K., and others.

Within our intermediate poetry workshop, we’ll approach our writing, discussion, and feedback with questions like: How does performance shape and challenge our writing? How do our poems shift when held in our bodies? How do our words change when they’re stretched to the stage? Texts: TBA. Requirements: TBA.

English 3467SIssues and Methods in Tutoring WritingMoss, [email protected]

English 3467S focuses on theories and practices in tutoring writing. The aim of this course is to prepare undergraduates to work with writers from diverse backgrounds and disciplines. This class provides a unique opportunity for its members to learn about composition theory and pedagogy, tutoring strategies, and writing center theories and practices in order to put these theories and practices to work in classroom and writing center settings. Students will apprentice as writing consultants/tutors in the University Writing Center. Therefore, in addition to our regularly scheduled class time, each person enrolled in this course will spend approximately one hour per week in the Writing Center. This course is particularly helpful to those who are planning careers as teachers or who are enrolling in the professional writing minor (3467S is an elective for the writing minor). Students who successfully complete this course are eligible to apply for paid tutoring positions in the University Writing Center.

English 3468Special Topics in Nonfiction: Using Memoir as Device with the Tradition of the Personal EssayYun, [email protected]

In this course, we will consider the nonfiction genre as more of a continuum where memoir can function as journalism, where personal meditation can function as cultural criticism, and so on.

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We will explore the potential of memoir as a device to nonfiction writing outside or beyond one’s own personal experiences. We’ll focus on how to utilize personal experience as evidence for a subject your “I” is obsessed, haunted, or interested with: to delve into the desire to see and to say, to document, to observe, to research, to bear witness, to articulate elements of life. We’re going to challenge the maxim of “write what you know” by writing what you want to know about what you don’t know quite yet.

Over the course of the semester, we will read published work by a variety of writers and discuss issues of research methods and ethical considerations embedded in writing across race and gender and community lines. Students will turn in several drafts of one longer essay that employs the techniques covered in class. Class discussion will center on students’ original writing, as well as analyzing the techniques employed by published authors. English 4150Professional Writing CulturesPatton, [email protected]

Working both individually and collaboratively, you will conduct research, strategize, and produce work-world-ready text in a number of genres and media. Learn how to:

(1) analyze the ways writing discourse shapes workplaces(2) enhance your professional writing skills and accuracy(3) craft texts for social media and other workplace platforms.

You will also explore the role of working writers in their organizations and present your findings as part of a panel on contemporary workplace writing. English 4150 is a required course

for the Minor in Professional Writing and a prerequisite for the Professional writing internship.

English 4513Introduction to Medieval LiteratureLockett, [email protected]

English 4513 introduces students to several genres of medieval European literature written over the span of a millennium, all read in Modern English translations. Building upon selections from Vergil's Aeneid, Augustine's Confessions, Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, and the lives of the saints, we will go on to explore the medieval literature of feud and warfare (such as Beowulf and Njal's Saga), romance (including selections from Marie de France and Chretien de Troyes), and religion and mysticism (represented by Dante and Julian of Norwich). Students will take reading quizzes and write short response papers as well as a final research paper.English 4520.01Shakespeare the DramatistNeville, [email protected]

This class will approach a selection of Shakespeare’s plays through several methods, examining them not only as historical artifacts rooted in the time and place of their creation, but also as spectacles created to be continuously performed and re-adapted right through to our modern age. In order to better enable us to consider the ways that staged properties, blocking, special effects, and audience engagement are crucial parts of Shakespeare’s stagecraft, “Shakespeare the Dramatist” is especially interested in the practical means by which Shakespeare’s plays resonate with both historical

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and contemporary audiences. Through exercises, excursions, and class discussions in costuming, casting, producing, and directing, we will seek to answer questions like: “How was the English stage of 1592 different from a typical American stage of 2015?” “How does a production create the suspension of disbelief when the audience is in the same light as the actors?” “When you don’t have modern technologies, how do you create special effects?” and “What did Elizabethans think a Roman or medieval battle looked like?” Students in this class will develop the capacity for discriminating judgment based on aesthetic and historical appreciation of Shakespeare through reading, discussion, and informed critical written interpretation of the texts. Through this process students will also learn to appraise and evaluate both the social values of Shakespeare’s cultural moment as well as their own. Students will be evaluated by regular reading quizzes and class assignments including a group presentation, a final essay, and midterm/final exams. Texts will include the following: 2 Henry VI, Much Ado About Nothing, Julius Caesar, Othello, Macbeth, The Winter’s Tale, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece.

English 4520.01ShakespeareProfessor Luke [email protected]

Jean Starobinski once suggested that history is both what's entirely inside us and what's entirely foreign: our inside and our outside. We'll approach our study of Shakespeare with this in mind, prepared to recognize in ourselves what Shakespeare taught us to be, but also to acknowledge all those aspects of his work and its relation to the times in which he lived that we have to make a special effort to learn because they have become fundamentally

unfamiliar and all-but lost to us. We'll read comedies, histories, tragedies as well as at least one of Shakespeare's late plays (now called tragicomedies or romances). Also some of his poetry. Several short and one long paper; ancillary research exercises; possibly a class presentation; possibly a final exam. Text: The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, et al. 3rd ed. 2015.

English 4520.01ShakespeareFarmer, Alan [email protected]

This course will explore the formal, social, and political engagements of Shakespeare’s plays. It will pay particular attention to how his plays conform to and work against the genres of comedy, tragedy, history, and romance, and to how they represent such issues as gender, sexuality, religion, race, and political power. In addition to some critical and historical essays on the early modern theater and culture, we will likely read some combination of the following plays: RICHARD III, HENRY V, THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, MEASURE FOR MEASURE, ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, OTHELLO, KING LEAR, THE WINTER’S TALE, and CYMBELINE.

Requirements include two essays, a midterm exam, a final exam, regular attendance, and active participation.

Assigned texts: I will order the NORTON SHAKESPEARE (2nd ed.), ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (ISBN 9780393931518), but any modern edition with glosses, notes, and line numbers of the above plays is fine. Good editions of single plays are published by Folger, Pelican, Cambridge, Norton, Oxford, Bedford, Arden, Bantam, and Signet. Reputable one-volume editions of all of Shakespeare’s plays are

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published by Longman, Pelican, Riverside, and Norton. THE NECESSARY SHAKESPEARE, ed. David Bevington, is also fine.

English 4521Renaissance DramaDutton, [email protected]

This course will examine a range of representative texts by contemporaries of Shakespeare, looking at them in the context of the theatres for which they were written and of the society which they reflected. Most of the texts studied will be taken from The Routledge Anthology of Renaissance Drama, ed. Simon Barker and Hilary Hinds (Routledge 2003), including some of Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy; anon. Arden of Faversham; Thomas Heywood, A Woman Killed with Kindness; Francis Beaumont, The Knight of the Burning Pestle; Ben Jonson, Epicene, or The Silent Woman; Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker, The Roaring Girl; Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedy of Mariam; and Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, The Changeling. Other texts, including masques written to be performed by Queen Anne, wife of King James I, will be supplied separately. A recurrent theme will be the status of women and the depiction of sexuality in the texts. Assessment will be based on two papers (3/5 sides), plus quizzes, class participation and a final. (Anyone who receives a B+ or better on either of the papers may opt to do a long paper -10-12 sides - in lieu of the final.)

English 4535Strange Migrations: Slavery and Empire in the Novel and on the Stage during the EnlightenmentWheeler, [email protected]

Several of the most iconic characters in British literature of the modern era 1660-1800 appear initially in fictions of empire, set in the Americas and the West Indies, and then migrate to the stage. We will thoroughly investigate the intersection of literary form and the politics of interpretation. We will focus on theorizing and historicizing characteristic eighteenth-century genres, or the differences between the way that the novel and theater entertain, including the depiction of rebellious characters and tragic, comedic, and satiric resolutions associated with the problematic of slavery and freedom. In concluding the course with Olaudah Equiano’s slave narrative and selections from Ignatius Sancho’s letters, we will be able to cast the issues dramatized in the theater and the novel in light of more autobiographical forms of writing with a greater claim to realism.

Aphra Behn, Oroonoko; or, the Royal Slave (1688)Thomas Southerne, Oroonoko (1696)Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)Thomas Sheridan, Robinson Crusoe, or Harlequin Friday, a pantomime (1782)Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726)David Garrick, Lilliput (1756)Richard Steele, Spectator 11 (Inkle and Yarico) (1711)George Colman, Inkle and Yarico; a Comic Opera (1787)Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Life (1789)John Fawcett, Obi; or Three-Fingered Jack (1800)

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William Earle, Obi; or Three-fingered Jack (1800)Likely Assignments: two papers and a final exam.

English 454019th Century British PoetryRisinger, [email protected]

In this course, we will consider how Romantic and Victorian poets tried to make sense of the nineteenth century and its tumultuous changes. These poets were some of the first writers to grapple with the modern world as we know it. Their century was rocked by the invention of the train, the telegraph, the photograph, and the bicycle. The industrial revolution gave rise to a broad but unpredictable social realignment, and Darwin’s evolutionary hypothesis disrupted religious convictions and comfortable visions of nature. Revolutionary political ideas prompted the reconsideration of tradition, custom, and order. As the British Empire expanded to cover a quarter of the globe, both the Romantics and the Victorians confronted an increasing disjunction between local culture and a globalized world.

Over the course of the semester, we will think about how these developments resulted in the formal and thematic transformation of British poetry. Poets we will discuss range from William Wordsworth and John Keats to Christina Rossetti and Oscar Wilde. Weekly in-depth readings will be paired with short analysis papers and a critical essay. At the end of the course, everyone will have an opportunity to give a short (potentially idiosyncratic) TED talk about an aspect of the course that they found intriguing, perplexing, or important.

Throughout the semester, we will pay close attention to form, genre, and style, all while constantly testing Percy Shelley’s bold claim that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” (No prior knowledge of poetry is necessary to take and enjoy this course).

English 4542Nineteenth-Century British NovelGalvan, [email protected]

This course will look at significant historical events and ideas as these helped to shape novels of the Romantic and Victorian periods (that is, novels from approximately 1800-1900). At the same time, we will be looking at developments in the novel itself—the different forms and modes that arose during this time. We will probably begin (all text selections are tentative) with the marriage plot (a tale of two lovers’ complicated path to the altar) in Jane Austen’s Price and Prejudice, focusing on this plot’s complex social and economic underpinnings. Next we will move on to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a novel concerned with social justice, the definition of the human, and what we today call bioethics (ethical or moral questions around biological science). Shelley’s text is famously Gothic, as is our next book, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. We will also study both Brontë’s novel and Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations as examples of the Bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel; further, we will consider how those two works depict nineteenth-century gender norms and the increasing cultural power of the middle class. Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White will introduce us to the sensation novel, a popular thriller genre devoted to tales of crime and intrigue. Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde will return us once more to the Gothic, as well as highlight late-Victorian concepts of masculinity

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and sexuality. Lastly, we’ll read Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, a novel that borrows from theatrical tragedy and that subtly incorporates Darwinian evolutionary science. Course requirements (also tentative): enthusiastic class participation, four brief analytical responses (1-2 pp. each), one longer critical essay (5-7 pp.), and a final exam.

English 454320th Century British Fiction: Modernism and MediaSchotter, [email protected]

This class will survey British fiction in the first half of the twentieth-century by examining the ways in which the rise of new media like film, radio, and photography shaped and inspired literary texts. We’ll also look at how new genres of writing like censuses and travel guides influenced the experiments that writers like James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and E.M. Forster made with the novel. In the process we’ll become familiar with the major figures in British modernism—a literary and artistic movement we’ll define and question—and we’ll try to break down the boundaries between so-called “high culture” and more popular forms. Reading critical and theoretical work exploring the rise of new media will allow us to engage with questions about how these technologies transformed, and may continue to transform, us as viewers and readers. We will read novels by Conrad, Woolf, Joyce, Forster, Isherwood, and Beckett, as well as art criticism by Roger Fry, films by F.W. Murnau and Robert Weine, and a variety of photographs and newspapers from the period. Course requirements include a group project to write a modernist-style manifesto, a five-page paper, an eight page research paper with prospectus, and a presentation.

English 4547Twentieth Century PoetryShuttleworth, [email protected]

The course examines a selection of important poetic writing from the twentieth century. We will focus on individual figures as well as literary movements (for example: Modernism, The Movement, Beat poetry, Postmodernism) and work with material from the beginning of the century to its end. A central concern will be the way in which poetic writing responded to changing historical and cultural environments, informing notions of personal identity, ethical experience, nationality, class and gender. We will also consider differing ideas on the role of poetry and the poet in this period. Students will be instructed in techniques of close textual analysis and discussion, and will at the end of the course have a command of the poetry of the period and an awareness of its importance as a body of writing.

Required Text: Richard Ellmann and Robert O?Clair (eds.), Modern Poems: A Norton Introduction, second edition (Norton). Requirements: 2 Essays, Midterm Examination, Attendance and Participation.

English 4552U.S. Poetry to 1915: American Epic: Poetic Storytelling in the American Literary TraditionHewitt, [email protected]

This course introduces students to a much neglected poetic genre in early American writing – the epic poem. Beginning with some of the terrifying apocalyptic visions of 17th century Calvinist ministers, we

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will also read some of the more satirical narrative poems that were so popular in the 18th century including The Sot Weed Factor, the Anarchiad, Hasty Pudding, and Barlow’s A Vision of Columbus. As we move into the 18th century we will read work by Longfellow and Whitman, but also authors who aren’t generally considered as writers in the epic poetic tradition. We will look at Poe’s strange prose poem Eureka, Thoreau’s Walden, a couple of Dickinson’s fascicle bindings of her lyrics, and parts of Melville’s Clarel. We will conclude with two high modernist texts that themselves explicitly reflect back on the American epic tradition: Jean Toomer’s Cane and Hart Crane’s The Bridge.

Course requirements will include disciplined reading that includes keeping a detailed reading notebook, short response papers, a final examination, and regular class attendance.

English 4553Contemporary LiteraturePrinz, [email protected]

English 4553 is designed this term as a survey of 20th century American fiction. We will read novels and short stories by the “Greats”: Hemingway (“The Sun Also Rises”), Faulkner (“The Sound and the Fury”), Morrison (“Beloved”), Hurston (“Their Eyes Were Watching Go”), a novel by Pynchon (to be decided), Spiegelman (“Maus,” Part One), and a last novel to be decided by students (either by Don Delillo or Jennifer Egan). Other authors to be considered will be posted on Carmen site. Requirements include two papers (4-5 pages in length), two exam, regular attendance and participation in discussions.

English 4553Twentieth Century U.S. Fiction: The Catcher in the Rye : Texts, Contexts, CountertextsCariello, [email protected]

Published in the middle of the 20th century, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is a touchstone of American literature, and has received the broadest range of attention from both readers and critics. Catcher has been praised and vilified, scrupulously analyzed and routinely banned, read by millions and almost always misunderstood. Sixty years after publication, the book and its protagonist Holden Caulfield are referenced on almost a daily basis in popular culture. Seldom has a book worked its way into the American consciousness as completely as The Catcher in the Rye. Why? What is it about this book that demands our attention?

In order to explore these (and other) questions, we need to examine the circumstances of the production of the book: the context in which it was written, both culturally, as an artifact of mid-century America, and authorially, as Salinger’s response to literary conventions and paradigms. We also need to examine the reception of the book: why does it stick around (for better or worse) when so many other books don’t, and why do so many contemporary authors seem to be writing in direct response to its influence? In short, we need to study the text (and its pre-texts), the larger context of the book, and the counter-texts that surround it.

The Course Plan: First, we’ll do a close reading of The Catcher in the Rye. Very close. This stage will be accompanied by short lectures and several critical essays posted on Carmen. Second, we’ll do a brief analysis of several of Catcher’s immediate predecessors and

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likely influences. Third, we’ll look several books that fall under the sphere of influence that Catcher casts over literature in the second half of the century. These first three steps should take about seven weeks. We’ll then take a two-week break from class meetings for one-on-one conferences and research as you prepare your final projects. The final three or so weeks will be devoted to interactive presentations of your research to the class (details to follow).

Required Readings: The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger; and two of the following books: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain; The Human Comedy, William Saroyan; The Haircut and other stories, Ring Lardner; A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway; The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath; Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut; Bright Lights, Big City, Jay MacInerney; Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foe; Various handouts, supplied by the instructor on Carmen.

English 4554English Studies and Global Human RightsShuman, [email protected]

We will explore cultural works from multiple cultural contexts, including non-Western contexts, to better understand they ways in which they both represent and contribute to the development of the philosophies, histories, laws, and practices of human rights. For example, using a combination of literary, legal, media (film, television, newspapers, internet) and cultural documents, we will examine political asylum, gender rights, disability rights. We will explore the vital role that humanities-based methodologies can play in the study of human rights and the often controversial role that cultural works (literature, cinema, photography, art, and so on) have played in the emergence of a diverse but nevertheless identifiable

international human rights culture. These intellectual pursuits are profoundly implicated in and have implications for understanding the global dimensions of diversity and becoming an educated global citizen. This course fulfills both the GE diversity, global studies and applies to the Minor in Human Rights (International Studies).

English 4559Introduction to Narrative and Narrative TheoryMcHale, [email protected]

“Narrative” is a current buzz-word and a catch-all term – everything is narrative nowadays! – but it is also one of the principle means of organizing experience in everyday life and conversation, popular culture and literary works. This course introduces students to the basic concepts and tools of narrative theory and analysis, in four general areas: the underlying structure of story; the reordering of story-events in the plot; the production of a story-world (narrative time and space); and the representation of selves (narrators, speakers, perceivers, minds). We will study a selection of classic essays in narrative theory, and we will read and analyze a variety of narrative works – fairy-tales, short-stories, novels, one graphic narrative and at least one film.

Readings. Most readings will be available through the course Carmen site, but students should also obtain copies of three short texts: Alison Bechdel, Fun Home; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; and Gabriel García-Márquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

Assignments. Students will submit three short (3-5 page) writing assignments, each worth 20% of the final grade, as well as two pass/fail exercises. A final longer paper of 7-8 pages, worth 40% of

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the final grade, will apply the tools developed in the course to a classic American novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

English 4560Special Topics in Poetry: The News from Poems Matthew [email protected]

In this course, we'll use reader response theory and metaphoric analysis to explore the ways in which poetry tells us what we need to know about life, the universe and everything. Our working premise is that poems are not merely literary artifacts, but linguistic events, verbal manifestations of our deep-seated understanding of how the world does, or should, "work." In this way, poems provide us with "news" we can get from no other source.

Course Readings: all poems and essays will be provided by the instructor and posted at Carmen.

Course Work: three 5-7 page essays and an in-class presentation; participation in class activities, including a few creative assignments.

English 4563Twentieth-Century U.S. FictionMartinez, [email protected]

We will examine American literature written after 1945 to gain a sense of the critical formal and socio-political issues of the last sixty years. Readings from Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Tomas Rivera, Flannery O'Connor, Junot Diaz, and others. Midterm, final, journal, and weekly worksheets.

English 4564.04Major Author, Twentieth Century: Samuel BeckettErickson, [email protected]

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) was one of the most important and innovative modern writers of the 20th century. He radically changed the way we’ve thought about the nature of writing and representing reality, consciousness, and the nature of the self. His play Waiting for Godot has entered into common parlance as a symbol of hope and its existential frustration. In this class we will be exploring the parallel development of two facets of his work: his prose—novels and shorter fiction, and plays--moving from the theatre of the absurd to late, highly poetic minimal performance works.

ASSIGNMENTS: Seven or eight variable response papers. Two analytical papers, 6-9 pages. TEXTS: The Selected Works of Samuel Beckett (Grove Press).

English 4566Writing Poetry IIHudgins, [email protected]

This class will focus on your poetry—and on making you better a poet and better reader of poetry. Students will write 8-10 poems, and the class will discuss them, with an eye to what works in the poems and what can be improved. We will also read Paul Fussell's Poetic Meter and Poetic Form and James Longenbach’s The Art of the Poetic Line—both superb and useful books--so we will have a context in which to discuss the poems in class. The Fussell book is

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expensive if you buy it new, but it’s easy to find cheap used copies. I’m also looking for a good anthology of contemporary poems for you to read.

Admission to the class is based on your work. Please submit three poems to me as Word attachments at [email protected] by the start of registration or as a soon afterward as you can. Usually students in the class will have taken 266 already, but even if you haven’t, you are welcome to apply. I am looking forward to working with you this fall.

Readings: Poetic Meter and Poetic Form, by Paul Fussell, The Art of the Poetic Line, by James Longbach, And an anthology of contemporary poetry.

English 4568Writing of Creative Nonfiction IIMartin, [email protected]

This is a writing workshop for the advanced study of creative nonfiction. We will have selected readings that I'll choose at a later date and make available to you on Carmen, but the bulk of our work will be the workshop discussion of your own essays. Each student will present two essays for consideration. Students will prepare written critiques and then participate in the workshop discussions. Each student will present a significantly revised version of one essay at the end of the semester. This is an admission by audition course, and students interested in being considered for the class should submit samples of their creative nonfiction to me as soon as possible.

English 4569Digital Media and English Studies: Digital Messaging and StorytellingDeWitt, Scott [email protected]

This course will take up the study of digital media and its relationship to messaging and storytelling. Students from across areas in the Department of English—literature, film, creative writing, folklore, rhetoric, disability studies, sexuality studies, etc.—or in majors outside of English will work on a series of short form digital projects using rich media.

We will study and produce texts that combine sophisticated digital imaging, video, sound, animation, and print. In this seminar, we will produce digital media texts that emerge as rich, layered, and dynamic representations of stories, concepts, data, and arguments. The most significant part of this course focuses on the “P” word: Production. This course is structured mostly as a studio class, where we will be working together in one of the Digital Media Project’s classroom. The success of a studio course depends on your willingness to use class time to invent, create, play, and critique. I hope that most of our conversations will emerge from our work in the studio in ways that today, I am unable predict. I firmly believe that we cannot talk intelligently about digital media technologies until we, ourselves, compose with them. This is your opportunity to do just that. I will teach you a number of digital media technologies, and you will be able to create your work in the spaces these technologies afford you.

Some of you may have experience with the technologies we will compose with. For those of you new to these technologies, I will teach you more than you need to know to be successful in this class.

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Please do not let your lack of experience with technology intimidate you. You will not be asked to purchase a textbook for this class. Also, you will have access to cameras, audio recorders, and computers from The Digital Media Project. You may need to spend a small amount of money on materials (things like batteries, for example). I will strongly (perhaps I should say “very strongly”) recommend that you purchase an external hard drive for which you will find a great deal of use after this class ends. I will advise you on this purchase once class begins.

This class can be used to fulfill the Digital Media requirement in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Literacy concentration for the English Major.

English 4572Traditional GrammarCherry, [email protected]

English 4572 first explores various meanings of the term ""grammar,” as well as our personal experiences with ""grammar.” We then turn our attention to how the grammatical structures of English have been systematically described. We will learn appropriate terminology for the grammatical structures of English and practice representing these structures graphically using traditional means such as diagramming. The primary goal of the course is to arrive at solid working understanding of the various structures of English. Although such an understanding might indirectly enhance speaking or writing skills in English, students should understand that English 4572 is not a writing or speech course. Evaluation is based on 4-5 quizzes, a midterm, and final exam.

English 4573.02Rhetoric and Social Action: The Rhetoric of HIV/AIDS Media and MessagingDeWitt, Scott [email protected]

This section of Rhetoric and Social Action will take an historical look at media and messaging surrounding HIV and AIDS. Using a number of rhetorical lenses, we will begin by looking at news and medical reports that shaped the earliest thinking about HIV/AIDS and the political responses that did and did not follow. We will spend a substantial amount of our time analyzing the activist work of ACT-UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, and their use of media, messaging, theater, and demonstration to disrupt and shape the direction of the epidemic and the response to it. Additionally, we will examine the art, film, literature, and music that emerged and continues to emerge surrounding HIV/AIDS. Our analysis will extend into public policy, healthcare, social services, and legal texts. We will address shifting rhetorics and language as prevention, research, and treatments shape our understanding of the virus and people living with the virus. We are going to cover a lot of ground in a relatively short amount of time. In order to analyze texts and artifacts about HIV/AIDS, we are going to have to talk openly, frankly, and honestly about sex, sexuality, the body, race, gender, economic structures, medical science, healthcare access, politics, geography, religion, and education.

The course will be taught in a technology-rich studio in the English Department’s Digital Media Project. Access to this room, as well as the resources of the Digital Media Project, will give us immediate access to texts during class and will open the possibilities for creating digital media texts for class projects.

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This course meets the Rhetorical Studies requirement in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Literacy concentration for English Majors.

English 4576.02Critical Theory IIHigginbotham, [email protected]

This course surveys the major movements in critical theory after 1900, including New Criticism, structuralism, deconstruction, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminist, queer studies, historicism and cultural studies, and post-colonial and race studies. In addition to reading the originals, we will practice applying the various methods to literature to enable students to continue to use theoretical material in their other courses.

English 4577.03Folklore III: Issues and Methods: Hoaxes, Fakes & FraudsKaplan, [email protected]

This course investigates crises of mimesis, creation and copying, representation and misrepresentation with special attention to how these concepts might affect our approaches to tradition. Topics will include folklore and "fakelore," artistic and literary hoaxes, counterfeits and crop circles, mockumentaries and spirit photography. Throughout, we will hunt (though perhaps not catch) the elusive Authentic, the phantom that has haunted folkloristics from its inception.

English 4578HSpecial Topics in Film: Hitchcock's American FilmsConroy, [email protected]

Course will explore the American movies of Alfred Hitchcock, with special emphasis on his outsider's status and the way he comes to terms with certain American settings and themes as he proceeds in his new world. We start with "The 39 Steps" to suggest his English manner and to introduce some motifs that continue after he crosses the pond; and then do "Rebecca," "Shadow of a Doubt," "Notorious," "Strangers on a Train," "Rear Window," "Vertigo," "North by Northwest," "Psycho," and others. Texts will include Deutelbaum's Hitchcock reader and the recent biography. Duties to include a couple of papers and at least one exam.

English 4578Special Topics in Film: Film and Video GamesSchotter, [email protected]

In the last decade, the video game industry has eclipsed the movies in popularity. This class will examine how films from Hollywood and around the world have reacted to the rise of video games as a new and increasingly dominant medium. We’ll spend the first few weeks articulating the similarities and differences between video games and cinema, and looking at the ways in which video games have become more like films. In so doing, we’ll explore theories of video games and of the relationship between competing media forms. The bulk of the class will focus on an examination of recent films that seek to emulate or improve upon the unique characteristics of video games. Films may include The Matrix, Children of Men, Scott

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Pilgrim vs. The World, Run Lola Run, Holy Motors, and Being John Malkovich. Course requirements include a four page paper and presentation, a series of brief responses, and a final six page paper.

English 4578Special Topics in Film: Los Angeles Plays Itself - "The Valley, Beverly Hills, South Central…”Brewer, [email protected]

This course will examine the peculiar investment that American films of the last four decades have had in Los Angeles—as an object of both utopian yearnings and dystopian anxieties, as a place in which the very notion of ""place"" is both highly loaded and curiously hard to pin down. In so doing, we will be thinking about film's use of space and place more generally: the ways in which particular kinds of stories not only get associated with particular locales, but are able to use those locales as a sort of shorthand with which to conjure up a whole host of associations and expectations. Obviously, such techniques are hardly limited to film. But film's visual qualities (the ways in which every film has to be set somewhere and that somewhere has to be shown) give space and place a power on screen that is hard for other forms and media to match. We'll try to account for that power as we figure out why Los Angeles, of all places, should loom so large.

Likely viewings will include Valley Girl, The Terminator, Die Hard, Boyz n the Hood, L.A. Confidential, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Hancock, The Lincoln Lawyer, and perhaps The Bling Ring.

Your grade for the course will be comprised of your grades on three maps, two essays that grow out of those maps, and your active participation in our discussions.

English 4578Special Topics in Film: Television, Narrative, SerialityO'Sullivan, [email protected]

This course will consider central questions of televisual art and narrative, focusing on the first seasons of three different series: The Wire (2002); Mad Men (2007); and Orange Is the New Black (2013). We will examine the basic storytelling practices of serial television; the creation of storyworlds; the organization of time and space; the interplay of characters; and connections between cinema (and the episodic) and television (and the recurring). Students will view three episodes per week on the streaming Media Library, and read two-three articles per week. Requirements: three papers, regular quizzes, active participation.

English 4581Special Topics in U.S. Ethnic Literatures: The Ethics of Comparative RacializationsItagaki, [email protected]

Are all racial minorities Black? Is Yellow Black or White? Why are Asians considered a model minority and other racial groups stigmatized? Do biracial or multiracial Americans "count"? Why can?t we all get along? What is the racial hierarchy from the past to the present that now determines our future? How is that racial hierarchy gendered in the hypermasculinization and

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hyperfeminization of groups? The inclusiveness of the term "Black" or "African American" has been contested by multiple diasporic populations of African descent from all over the world. "Asian American," a political category, has itself been contested by Pacific Islanders, South Asians, and those of the multiple Asian diasporas. "Latina/o" is not considered a racial identity by the US Census, and Arab Americans are considered white. What does it mean to be identified as Native American rather than through one's affiliation to or enrollment in tribes and nations? We'll talk about the complex histories of US and European imperialisms and international politics that produce uneven and often illogical racial identities in the US. Given that the category of race is an interracial formation, we will examine how writers of color merge forms and genres in order to advance an interracial ethics.

Texts: Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera; Anna Deavere Smith,Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992; Hisaye Yamamoto, "A Fire in Fontana;" Paul Beatty, The White Boy Shuffle; Gish Jen, Mona in the Promised Land; Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker; R. Zamora Linmark, Rolling the R's; Karen Tei Yamashita, The Tropic of Orange; Nina Revoyr, Necessary Hunger; Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony.

Requirements: 2 shorter papers or 1 longer paper, weekly online discussion board responses, class presentation; final project can be a digital narrative.

English 4582Special Topics in African American Literature - Black Literature and MusicPonce, Martin [email protected]

This course explores the complex relations between black literature and music. Why has music been so important, formally and thematically, to African American writers? In what ways have they drawn inspiration from and sought to emulate music’s artistic and political power? How have certain kinds of music become racialized as “black” in the first place? How has music come to represent a significant terrain for discussions of black authenticity? Less musicological or sociological than literary, our approach will focus on examining the ways that representations of music in the literature serve as critical sites where issues of race, culture, class, gender, sexuality, and aesthetics are staged and debated. Possible authors include Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Black Arts poets, Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison, August Wilson, Nathaniel Mackey, Harryette Mullen. Requirements: attendance, participation, in-class work, short responses, two papers.

English 4583Special Topics in World Literature in English: AfropolitansAdeleke [email protected]

This discussion and lecture class will focus on fiction and poetry (written, acted, and spoken) by 6 Anglophone writers who came of age in the last decade and a half and termed themselves AFROPOLITANS because their lives range over continents—mainly

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the Americas, South Asia, and Europe—although their cultural and artistic preoccupations refuse to leave Africa alone. We shall explore how the writers locate their African homes in early 21st century anglophone world.

We will read stories and poems by Chimamanda Adichie, Helen Oyewumi, Taye Sellasie, Doreen Baingana, Chris Abani, and Dinaw Mengestu. We will also analyze one or two "Nollywood" movies and a few Hip-Life recordings.

Students will be expected to attend classes regularly and punctually, participate in class discussions, and write three papers.

English 4587Asian American Literature and Culture-- Henna and Hip Hop: South Asians AbroadJani, [email protected]

This course investigates literature, film and nonfictional texts by and about South Asian Americans, paying special attention to the politics of identity formation. What notions of religion, gender, nation, class, and sexuality govern these identities? Where have South Asian Americans fit in terms of the racial and ethnic dynamics of American society? How have ideas about the “exotic” or “spiritual” East and the “materialist” West shaped the image (and self-image) of this group?

Throughout, our aim will be to see the historical contexts within which these questions have changed – especially since greater immigration from Asia was allowed in 1965. We will specifically discuss how cultural identities have been shaped recently by

corporate globalization and the global popularity of everything ""Indian,"" from Bollywood, bhangra, and mehndi to writers and software engineers. The South Asian-British experience will also be referenced by way of comparison. By drawing on literary, cinematic, historical and ethnographic texts, this course seeks to provide students with an interdisciplinary framework for understanding the diverse and often conflicting ways through which the desi experience is portrayed and understood.

Writers: Ali, Divakaruni, Hamid, Lahiri, Parekh, PrashadFilms: American Desi, Chutney Popcorn, Mississippi Masala, My Beautiful Laundrette, My Son the Fanatic. Participation, 2 short papers, research project.

English 4590.03HHonors Seminar in Eighteenth-Century British Literature: PosthumanismMacpherson, [email protected]

It’s not as though Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner originated the threatening possibility of a post-human creature barely distinguishable from human beings. The anxious relationship between the two is as old as Enlightenment humanism itself. This course will introduce students to the cultural history of the Enlightenment by way of its non-human things: air pumps, microscopes, pamphlets, books, playing cards, wigs, desks, paintings, dildos, hot-air balloons, robots, dolls, animals. We will survey major texts in the history of philosophy, ranging from Rene Descartes’ On Man, to Julian Offray de La Mettrie’s Machine Man, to Erasmus Darwin’s Loves of the Plants. We will read poems, essays, and novels that take up the question of objects and their

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agency: Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina; Jonathan Swift’s “dressing room poems”; Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey; eighteenth-century “it-narratives” such as Adventures of a Guinea and Adventures of a Pin Cushion; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. We will learn something of the visual art of the period, in particular landscape and still-life painting. And we will read modern-day theories of the post-human that blame the Enlightenment for a separation between human and object worlds that the primary texts do not, in fact, create. We will conclude the semester with contemporary texts that take the relationship between eighteenth-century persons and things as their topic: Frederico Fellini’s film Casanova, J. M. Coetzee’s novel Slow Man and Peter Carey’s novel The Chemistry of Tears, and Blade Runner itself. Course requirements include one close-reading assignment, one research paper, one oral presentation, and weekly response papers. This course is designed for anyone with an interest in animal studies, media studies, the history of science, the history of art, the history of sexuality, as well as the history of literature.

English 4590.07HPetro-Aesthetics: Oil and Literature, Film, and Art Since 1945Davis, Thomas [email protected]

No resource has shaped the modern era like oil. On one hand, oil has powered economic growth and technological development; on the other hand, the environmental and human consequences have been dire and, in some cases, irreversible. Although oil has saturated modern history and culture, we have just begun to examine the aesthetics of oil. What forms of representation make visible the contradictions of living in a world powered by oil? What is it about oil as a material substance and a figure of modern life that makes it so difficult to narrate or represent? In this class, we

will explore some of the most provocative artworks that have engaged with oil directly and indirectly. Our geographical focus will range across the Caribbean, Nigeria, the Middle East, Alberta, and North Dakota. We will draw on a vast range of cultural works--magical realist fiction, experimental novels, documentary film and photography, performance art, museum exhibitions and curatorial practice--to map the patterns and differences that structure oil cultures and economies across the globe. Possible texts include: Ben Okri Stars of the New Curfew; Nawal El Saadawi Love in the Kingdom of Oil; Patrick Chamoiseau Texaco; Edward Burtynsky and Alec Soth's documentary photography; Jesse Moss' film The Overnighters; museum exhibitions on North Dakota's oil boom in Chicago, IL and Fargo, ND; the performance art collective Liberate Tate; and Andrei Molodkin’s installations and sculptures. We will also read histories of oil production, recent work in ecocriticism and environmental humanities, and some political theory.

English 4590.08HSeminar in Colonial & US Literature: American Literary Mystics: Emerson, Thoreau, and WhitmanFink, [email protected]

When Ralph Waldo Emerson famously declared in his Transcendentalist manifesto, Nature, “all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the universal being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God,” he was attempting to articulate an experience common to all mystical traditions. In this course, we will study selected works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman as particular, nineteenth-century American manifestations of this more universal mysticism. We will lay the groundwork with William

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James’ chapter on mysticism in his Varieties of Religious Experience, and we will briefly examine a spectrum of mystic traditions, including Hindu and Buddhist mystical traditions, Jewish Kabbalah, Christian mysticism, and Islamic Sufism. We will also consider briefly the mystical elements works by British Romantics including Wordsworth and Shelley, and then we will devote the bulk of our attention to reading more deeply in selected works by Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman (and perhaps glancing more briefly at works by some of their contemporaries, including Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and Lydia Maria Child). Our concern will be both to understand the relationship between their transcendentalism and global mystic traditions and also to consider the distinctively American (and nineteenth-century) dimensions of their writings. Students will be responsible for a short class presentation, three short papers, and a final project.

English 4592Special Topics in Women in Literature and Culture: The Marriage Plot, Then and NowWarhol, [email protected]

The marriage plot: girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl marries boy in the end. This course will investigate the origins of the marriage plot in British and American culture, starting with Shakespearean comedy and moving through novels about women written in the 19th century by Austen, the Brontës, and Trollope, then look at its straight and queer permutations in the 20th and 21st centuries in the form of "chick lit," romance fiction, Hollywood films, and television serials featuring characters across a wide spectrum of race, class, and sexualities. While the marriage plot still permeates many mainstream genres, we will also look at pop-culture texts that pose alternative storylines, both moderate and radical.

Requirements:(1) A 6-8 page research paper, in draft and final form(2) A midterm exam, requiring identification of passages from literary texts(3) Daily reading responses, answering questions posted on Carmen for each class meeting(4) A 10-15-minute oral ""prolusion"" or close reading of a short passage from one of our texts(5) Active participation in class discussions and regular attendance.

English 4595Law and Literature: Special Topic: Modern Slavery: Human Trafficking Law and LiteratureHesford, [email protected]

Increasingly, scholars, journalists, and activists classify human trafficking as a form of modern-day slavery. Neo-abolitionist rhetoric and rescue narratives dominate anti-trafficking campaigns, such as Anti-Slavery International and Free the Slaves. While the neo-abolitionist approach has drawn greater attention to the problem of human trafficking, it also runs the risk of obscuring ongoing relations of racial slavery in the post-civil rights era, such as increased disparities in economic, health, and education.

In this course, students will consider the scholarly promise and limitations of the analogy between modern trafficking in humans and the slave trade of the past. Students will become familiar with domestic U.S. and international human trafficking laws, prominent anti-trafficking campaigns, the field of contemporary slavery studies, comparative abolitionist uses of sentimentality in the

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depiction of modern-day slavery and the slave trade of the past, the conjoining of the slave narrative and immigrant narrative, and new understandings of race, diaspora, migration, and transnationalism.

In addition to reading excerpts from modern-day slave narratives by writers from around the world, including the United States (Bales and Trodd, 2008), we will read literary works by and about enslaved children in Africa (Akpan 2009, Bok 2003, Eggers 2006) and the Middle East (Muhsen 2010). Course requirements: two critical essays (5-6 pages) and a visual project.

English 5710Introduction to Old EnglishLockett, [email protected]

Old English is the language of the great heroic poem Beowulf, poignant elegies such as The Wanderer and The Seafarer, and many other works from early medieval England (circa 700-1100 A.D.). English 5710 is a beginning course for students who want to learn how to read this literature in its vivid original language. No prior knowledge of the subject is necessary; undergraduate and graduate students alike are welcome to enroll. During the first several weeks we will focus on pronunciation and grammar; the remaining weeks will be devoted to translating and discussing selected passages from Old English prose and poetry. Course requirements include eight quizzes, two written translation assignments, a set of bibliography and research exercises, and a final exam, as well as regular participation in class.

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