Spring 2003 Undergraduate Courses
Course information is organized in the following format:
Course Number
Course Title
Course Time
Instructor
Course description.
English 150.001
TTh 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
The Study of Literature
Shari Evans
Shari M. Evans
This course, designed for non-English majors, uses a thematic approach to introduce students to a variety of literary works and genres, as well as to some basic literary criticism. We will focus on the idea of home as an approach to examining contemporary literature and contemporary consciousness. With this topic in mind, we will investigate contemporary poetry, drama, prose fiction, and essays, looking at the ways writers use different genres to approach a common theme. We will engage in explorations of the cultural contexts of the works we read, especially the histories of the genres within which they appear. Students will present cultural or theoretical texts to the class to broaden our perspectives. We will focus on discovering the ways particular genres serve different literary purposes. We will also look at the way some contemporary writers are blurring the boundaries between genres.
We will engage a variety of authors, including Toni Morrison, Joy Harjo, Marilyn Robinson, Brenda Marie Osbey, William Faulkner, Gloria Naylor, Lee Smith, Alice Walker, N. Scott Momaday, Richard Rodriguez, James Baldwin, and Sandra Cisneros. Requirements include short responses to the readings, a take home midterm and final, and a research paper. Active participation is expected.
English 150.003
MWF 1:00-1:50 p.m.
The Study of Literature
Jana Giles
Love, hate, war, murder, social climbers, economic disasters, natural disasters, madness, kings, slaves, goddesses and gods, peasants, communists, capitalists, colonialists and post-colonialists, cyberpunks—what could be more fun than frolicking in the sandbox of literature? Seriously, though, folks, literature is our lives magnified and made engrossingly comprehensible at a safe distance, if only for a few pages at a time. This class is designed to help you discover the adrenaline thrill of literature, if you missed it the first time around, and give you new tools to work with if you are coming back for more. We'll explore all these timeless themes, with which we continue to struggle, in all forms of literature—poetry, drama, short fiction, novel—and from classical times to the present. We'll also look at one or two film adaptations as a way of understanding how a story changes depending on how it is presented. Requirements include two short papers, two exams, quizzes as needed, and lots and lots of class participation.
English 150.696
TTh 9:30-10:45 a.m.
The Study of Literature
Hector A. Torres
This course is a component of a Hewlett "cluster course." Please contact the English Department for more information.
English 219
Technical Writing
219.001, S 800-1045, K. Stewart
219.002, MWF 1300-1350
219.003, TTh 1230-1345, L. Greene
219.004, TTh 1100-1215, M. Mara
219.005, MWF 800-850
219.006, MW 1730-1845, J. Burbank
219.007, TTh 930-1045, R. Turner
219.008, MWF 1100-1150, M. Rooks
219.009, TTh 800-915, R. Turner
219.010, TTh 1600-1715, M. Ninneman
219.011, MWF 1100-1150, P. Bogard
219.012, TTh 1230-1345, L. Norstad
219.013, TTh 1400-1515, L. Norstad
219.014, MWF 1300-1350
219.015, MW 1600-1715, J. Burbank
219.016, TTh 1100-1215
219.017, MWF 900-950
219.018, MWF 900-950
219.019, TTh 1100-1215
219.020, TTh 1400-1515, S. McCabeIn this course, students will learn and practice various communication strategies and genres of technical writing. We will pay particular attention to the composition and design of larger documents like manuals, reports, and proposals. We will also compose and design smaller documents like memos, letters, descriptions, and instructions. To sharpen rhetorical skills, we will practice interpreting writing situations in the technical workplace; then, we will use strategies of audience-analysis, organization, style, and page layout to develop documents that address those rhetorical situations. Whenever possible, students will have the option to compose documents that suit their major or future discipline. This course is designed for students who want to study technical writing as part of their career preparation in engineering, business, social service, science, or other technical fields.
English 220.003
TTh 9:30-10:45 a.m.
Expository Writing
Matt Teorey
Sometimes writers employ a melodious and rhythmic style to inspire the minds or stir the passions of their readers. Other times writers use euphonic, expressive phrases to trick or mislead their readers. In this section of Advanced Expository Writing we will explore how writers tap into the musicality of language, and we will examine how writers from different disciplines-such as poets and advertisers, songwriters and scientists-use language in an attempt to influence us. In addition to analyzing written texts, we will analyze how newscasters, teachers, and friends use language orally. On some days, students will initiate discussion by sharing with the class an article, an advertisement, or an interview. Also, throughout the semester we will explore what options we as writers have if we want to create a serious academic essay that sings to and persuades an audience. The results of our analyses and discussions will be shaped into short response papers and three longer formal essays.
English 220.004
TTh 2:00-3:15 p.m.
Expository Writing: Memoir
Blas Falconer
Storytelling has always been a popular pastime. And why not? Personal stories engage us, temporarily transport us through time and space into someone else's life. They give us new perspectives, and sometimes, by the end, we walk away transformed. In class, we will consider how this is done. As we read and write memoirs, we will discuss both theoretical and technical concerns with the genre. We will ask ourselves what the difference is between truth and perspective, why a tale needs to be told, why it needs to be heard. We will spend the semester trying to answer these and other questions as we learn how to turn experience into art, as we learn how to use personal narrative to move far beyond the self
English 220.005
TTh 5:30-6:45 p.m.
Expository Writing
James Barry
What is exposition? A setting forth of meaning or intent. A statement intended to give information about or an explanation of difficult material. An act of exposing. These definitions reveal exposition to be a broad, if not vague term. This class will demonstrate the breadth of the definition. Our readings will include examples of the personal essay, political argument, academic and popular history, environmental and travel writing, personal letters, cultural criticism, anthropology, natural history, diatribe, profile, memoir, confession, and testimony. What the readings will share is the fact that almost all of the authors we'll read are also known for their fiction. Putting aside for the moment the shaky line between fiction and non-fiction, both genres share the goal of drawing the reader through the text. And writers of any kind of exposition are influenced by the techniques of fiction, such as setting dramatic scenes, and creating complex, believable characters. For each reading we'll concentrate on what did or did not draw you through the text. As much as the text itself, you'll be asked to study your own reactions. What makes you want to read on, and how can you use these effects in your own writing?
English 220.006
MWF 8:00-8:50 a.m.
Expository Writing
Pascal Fagerstrom
In this course we will examine various genres of writing (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, etc.) during the end of the nineteenth century and through the twentieth century. More specifically we will examine the relationship between various pieces of writing and history, how they influence each other, and how they helped to define the American experience. We will examine how man has been seen in society through literature, both accurately and inaccurately, and will discuss themes such as the American Dream, insanity, man as a social rebel, and the African American experience. Possible readings may include The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald), The Yellow Wallpaper (Perkins Gilman), The Lottery (Jackson), The Invisible Man (Ellison), and more. You will be required to write several short responses to the readings, may have an occasional quiz, and will be required to write two 5-7 pages essays as well as a final paper of about 10 pages.
English 220.007
MWF 11:00-11:50 a.m.
Expository Writing:Humans, Us, Them, and the Living World
Adam Ruh
It has been said that there is no such thing as writing, that there is only re-writing. With that premise in mind, this course will explore the act of writing as an on-going process of development in both the text under construction and its author, the student. To do so, we will work on non-fiction writing projects in different styles and genres throughout the semester ranging from short responses to formal essays. Our aim in this endeavor is to discover how our texts and ideas develop as we write and how we, as thinking beings, develop in that same process. Our writing and reading in this course will focus on examining the question of the position of human beings in our larger environment. What is our relationship to the world in which we live? What is our responsibility to that world? What can we ask of it? We will read texts, both fiction and non-fiction, from different perspectives and historical periods that address issues of the environment, ecology, and the relationship humans have to the rest of the living world. The overall goal of the course will be to develop our skills as writers engaging with texts and ideas through the writing process and to articulate, in writing, a statement of our individual understanding of the relationship between humans and the physical world in which we live.
English 220.008
TTh 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Expository Writing
Stephanie Gustafson
This is a class in advanced composition. Students should already know the basics of composition such as how to create and support a thesis statement, how to form paragraphs and how to edit their own writing. The goal of this class is to increase writing skills by applying techniques of stylistic analysis to the readings in The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. Students will explore the complex writing techniques of various authors, and through practice will learn to use these techniques in their own writing. In this course, students will use their own personal experiences and memories as material for their essays. Writing as a process will be the emphasis for this course, rather than the finished product. Assignments for this class include: in-class writing assignments, short written responses to readings and peer papers, an oral presentation, two formal essays, and final portfolio.
English 220.009
TTh 12:30-1:45 p.m.
Expository Writing
Writing From the Margins
Kate Mortellaro
Walk into any bookstore and you will see, in their own sections, Women's fiction, Hispanic/Chicano, Native American, Gay/Lesbian, etc. Reading both fiction and non-fiction, we will explore this marginalization of our contemporary American writing and what it means to lurk outside of the mainstream. We will further problematize this by considering what it means to the writer as well as to the reader and finding out what clashes occur when these two don't coincide. This course is designed to hone students' critical thinking and writing skills and, to this end, students will be encouraged to investigate, through writing, the ways ideas we engage in class play out in the world around them.
Students will write three major papers and a number of informal responses to the readings and to their own observations of living in the margins. As this is a writing course, we will emphasize revision through several drafts and learning to give feedback to peers that will enable this revision.
English 220.010
MWF 8:00-8:50 a.m.
Expository Writing:
Crossing Borders/Becoming American
Jack Trujillo
What is an American? In a multi-cultural nation the role of personal identity has been for many at the problematic heart of the question of national identity. Many of the more contentious political and cultural battles fought in America in recent times have centered on differing resolutions to the dialogue between who we think we are and who we fear we are becoming. Can the American Dream have an accent? Can it wear a chador? Can it be gay? In this course we will use a number of texts, essays, and films on minorities and the process of Americanization to explore what it means to be American. Through the medium of twentieth-century immigrant or minority American memoir, we will examine the complicated intersection of personal and national identity. How does any minority, whether based on race, ethnicity, class, or sexuality, write themselves into the "American story?" Students will be encouraged to explore their own place in that narrative.
Texts will be chosen primarily from non-fiction autobiographies such as those written by Carlos Bulasan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Richard Rodriguez, Ruben Martinez, Paul Monette, or others. We will also consider some fiction, oral history, journalism and visual media. Expect to read, write, and discuss a great deal. Students will write three essays and a number of response papers, and do a class presentation.
English 221.001
MWF 10:00-10:50 a.m.
Creative Writing: Fiction
Kate Fitzgerald
Flannery O'Connor wrote, "Art is the habit of the artist; and habits have to be rooted deep in the whole personality. They have to be cultivated like any other habit, over a period of time, by experience; and teaching any kind of writing is largely a matter of helping the student develop the habit of art." Just as the student of drawing learns by studying the works of master artists and practicing techniques of perspective, foreshortening, light and shadow, so the student of writing learns by studying the works of master writers and practicing the elements of fiction such as character, point of view, plot, setting, and dialogue. Great stories evolve from good ideas; but it is the skill with which stories are told that make them true works of art.
In this course we will read works by masters of the short story form (Joyce, O'Connor, Baldwin, Marquez, Olsen, and Dubus, to name a few) and explore the elements that make them work. Exercises geared towards specific writing components will help equip you with the basic tools you will need on your journey toward becoming a skilled writer. Workshops will provide you with feedback on your writing and will help you in your goal to revise and polish one short piece of fiction by the end of the semester.
English 221.002
TTh 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Creative Writing: Fiction
Kate Mortellaro
Barbara Kingsolver, in her introduction to Best American Short Stories 2001, wrote of the short story, "I love it for what it tells me about life. If it tells me something I didn't already know, or that I maybe suspected but never framed quite that way, or that never before socked me divinely in the solar plexus, then the story is worth the read." In this beginning level fiction class, students will begin to lean the craft of fiction writing that will hopefully lead from story to fiction that knocks someone in the solar plexus. There are three crucial elements to this: reading successful writers and using their works to provide a context for discussing the craft of writing, practicing that craft through writing experiments and drafting stories, and learning the protocol of workshopping which requires that you apply what we have learned to each other's stories in a workshop environment. In and out of class work will include one short story revised through a second draft, a writer's journal written to address specific assignments, and readings from Best American Short Stories 2002.
English 221.003
MW 7:00-8:15 p.m.
Creative Writing: Fiction
James Barry
Can fiction writing be taught? That's what everybody asks about a workshop. But the question is moot. What matters is that fiction writing can be learned. On one hand there are a number of specific skills one has to practice: dialogue, description, dramatic structure, etc. But another approach is that is there is only one skill: reading what you've written as others might. The trick is to gauge the effect of your work, and to know as you're writing when the story works. For this reason, reading and writing are equal parts within the workshop, inseparable as breathing in and breathing out. You'll learn craft from weekly readings of published prose, the stories of other students, and finally, from your own work. The goal is not to learn writing from scratch, but to recognize what you have already written well and from there to extend your capability. If you are nervous about revealing your writing, good—but don't let that hold you back. Assignments will include responses to weekly readings; a piece of original fiction to be workshopped, and the revision of that piece; a number of short, focused exercises; and critiques of others' stories.
English 221.004
MWF 1:00-1:50 p.m.
Creative Writing: Fiction
Paul Bogard
In this class we'll introduce ourselves to the basic elements of both writing fiction (such as plot, dialogue, and character) and discussing fiction (our own, as well as the masters) in a workshop setting.
Using Anne Lamott's fabulously down to earth book on writing fiction, Bird by Bird, as our starting point, we'll explore how writers who've gone before us have created and added to the tradition that is writing fiction. We'll join in that tradition by creating our own stories and learn from one another by reading and commenting on each other's work. Selections from Janet Burroway's excellent book Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, will help us understand the ways stories come alive.
In addition to weekly readings and written responses, each student will write, revise, and polish one work of short fiction by the end of the semester. The class will be one where discussion is vital and support for each other's work the underlying current.
English 222.001
MWF 11:00-11:50 a.m.
Creative Writing: Poetry
Anne Egger
As apprentices of the craft of poetry, we must read as much as we practice writing. This introductory poetry workshop will focus on discussing a variety of contemporary poets, examining their work to see how the vast array of forms, techniques, and poetic elements can combine to make an effective poem. In addition, we will workshop rough drafts of our own poems. Along with learning to recognize and use poetic elements (such as image, metaphor, and rhythm), we will have in-class writing exercises to help us explore the process of creating.
Course requirements will Include reading, writing, and workshopping as well as writing critical responses to poetry and attending poetry readings. There will be one required "Intensive Writing Week" where students will write, write, and write some more as a way of pushing beyond some of our writing perimeters. The semester will culminate with a portfolio of eight to ten revised poems Including an Introductory statement about your own work. This is a course for those who want to seriously study poetry as readers, writers, and lovers of language.
English 222.002
TTh 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Creative Writing: Poetry
Blas Falconer
How does a dramatic monologue permit the poet to speak of the self.? Why does a short-lined poem suggest the poet is withholding information? How does a poet convey a sentiment without becoming sentimental? The main concentration of our class will be devoted to answering these and other questions, as we write, revise and workshop poems. I will assign weekly exercises to help generate work and explore fundamental subjects, such as imagery, prosody, and structure. In addition, we will consider traditional forms and genres, i.e., the sonnet, the elegy, and the ode. Finally, the workshop will give us an opportunity to discuss all of these issues in relation to your own work, as we offer constructive criticism and due praise.
English 222.003
TTh 5:30-6:45 p.m.
Creative Writing: Poetry
Blas Falconer
See English 222.002 description above.
English 240.001
MWF 10:00-10:50 a.m.
Traditional Grammar
Jerry Shea
A course in the basics of traditional grammar-syntax, tenses, parts of speech, transformations, and so forth. Grammar is the bones of writing (as rhetoric is the flesh), so we shall become chiropractors, osteopaths. Exercises, a series of tests, possibly some extra credit work. Text: Kolln and Funk, Understanding English Grammar 6e.
English 240.002
MWF 11:00-11:50 a.m.
Traditional Grammar
Michael Hogan
This course studies the terminology and analyses of traditional English grammar as well as the usage questions either raised or solved by traditional grammar. Three tests. Text: Greenbaum, Oxford English Grammar.
English 240.003
TTh 7:00-8:15
Traditional Grammar
Scott Rode
Tense? Grammar got you down? Do grammar mavens hover outside your front door ready to pounce? Been mauled by subordinate clause lately? Or tied up by word strings? Do grammar bullies kick sand in your face at Grammar Beach? Fight back—take command of your writing by taking this course.
Learn the intricacies and subtleties of sentence patterns, modal auxiliaries, verb transformations, nominals, modifiers, and syntax. Explore a vast grammar sea of infinitives, gerunds, and participles. Discover your sixth grade English teacher's secret to energize intransitive verbs. Impress folks at parties by reciting the difference between interrogatives and expletives, or phrasal verbs and verb phrases. Make new friends with your handy knowledge of coordination. Make your parents proud by your dizzying display of adverbial and adjectival acumen. Break with tradition by mastering grammar's new functional terminology. Put together correct forms and construct meaningful structures. Create beautiful language. You've nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Text: Understanding English Grammar by Kolln and Funk, Sixth Edition. Course requirements: five short, objective tests plus active participation.
English 250.001
TTh 12:30-1:45 p.m.
The Analysis of Literature
Stephen Brandon
English 250.003
MW 1:00-2:15 p.m.
The Analysis of Literature
Sharon Oard Warner
People choose to read for many reasons: to be informed, entertained, enlightened, and inspired. Good literature can accomplish all of these things and more. In this course, you will read some wonderful and diverse short fiction, a number of dazzling poems, three distinctive plays by playwrights from different eras, and a 1991 novel that won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In addition to learning critical terms and general approaches, you will also look at the connections between these different ways of writing. What common features do the four genres share? What are literary themes? How are writers inspired and instructed by one another and by visual artists? What is it that nourishes the artist in each of us? To explore these and other questions, you will learn strategies for approaches to writing about literature. By the end of the semester, you will also do research from secondary sources and write a paper that explores what you've learned, using MLA documentation. Texts: Responding to Literature, King Lear, and A Thousand Acres.
English 250.004
W 5:30-8:00 p.m.
The Analysis of Literature
Hector A. Torres
This course introduces students to issues in the analysis of literature and film. We begin with William Shakespeare's "Hamlet," analyzing the text closely for metaphor, plot, character, theme, tone and other such stock characteristics of literary criticism. From there we move to a recent staging of Hamlet (2000) by Michael Almereyda, which stars Ethan Hawke in the title role. We will also do a similar analysis of John Rollins Ridge's "The Adventures of Joaquin Murrieta" and study the various ways this legend has been represented in both the novel and the film "The Mask of Zorro." The course will then shift into the genre of contemporary poetry. In this section we will read Gary Soto's "New and Selected Poems" and other sources yet to be determined. We will do a fair amount of readings in the interpretation of literary theory. Through these readings, we will try to understand the effects of postmodernity on the relationship of American culture to literature and film.
English 250.005
TTh 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Introduction to the Analysis of Literature
Jesse Alemán
This course assumes that English majors must do more than simply read literary texts. English majors should understand and apply multiple theoretical and critical approaches currently shaping the field of literary analysis. English 250 thus introduces English majors to the profession of literary studies. We'll focus on the more significant movements in literary theory—New Criticism, Structuralism, Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, Feminism, Marxism, and Cultural Studies—and learn how to apply theory to poetry and fictional prose to generate literary criticism. In the process, we'll practice the conventions of our field, learn the major terms of literary analysis, and understand the relationship between theory, literature, and criticism.
English 290.001
TTh 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Introduction to Professional Writing
Richard Johnson-Sheehan
This course offers an introduction to the professional writing concentration for English majors and minors. Nevertheless, people who are interested in broadening and strengthening their writing skills are also welcome. In this course, you will learn about the different career paths available to writers, while you practice writing texts that are commonly produced by article writers, technical writers, editors, public relations agents, and other people who write for a living. You will learn how to write a variety of different documents, how to manage writing and editing projects, and how to design professional texts. This course is designed specifically for people who are planning work professionally as writers. We will also have regular visits from working professional writers, who will tell us about their careers.
English 293.001
TTh 9:30-10:45 a.m.
Western Literature in a World Context: Enlightenment through the Present
Ron Shumaker
This course, which counts toward the Humanities component of the Core Curriculum requirements, traces the trajectory of western literature from the confidence of the eighteenth century, through the cultural and philosophical challenges of the nineteenth century, to the irony and despair of Modernism and Postmodernism. In each of the three units, we will read some major non-English/American works and some representative short selections, ending with contrasting literature from non-Western sources—usually Native American, African, and Oriental writers. Major writers will include Voltaire, Moliere, Flaubert, Ibsen, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Kafka, Lorca, Marquez, and Momaday. Requirements include three exams and two papers, as well as short responses and quizzes as necessary.
English 295.001
TTh 5:30-6:45 p.m.
Survey of Later British Literature
Martha Ninneman
This course surveys the genres of poetry, fiction, drama, and non-fiction prose in British literature from the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. We will devote approximately equal class time to examining the literature of the Romantic, Victorian, and Modern periods, as well as the important cultural trends, major developments in genre and style, and key philosophical and social issues of these periods. The two novels for this class—E. M. Forster's Howards End (1910) and Allan Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958)—give an early and later chronological perspective on the theme of the change of England to a less-powerful nation with the loss of empire and the resulting economic and social problems. An additional required text is the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2, 6th ed. Grades will be determined by three exams and one 7-10 page paper.
English 295.002
MWF 10:00-10:50 a.m.
Later English Literature
Hugh Witemeyer
This course surveys English and Irish literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries including poetry, drama, fiction, and non-fiction by a variety of authors. We will devote five weeks each to the Romantic, Victorian, and Modern periods. Class meetings will combine lecture and discussion, and some classes will be conducted by other members of the UNM British and Irish literature faculty. Writing assignments will include two take-home midterm examinations, an oral report, and a final examination.
Texts: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th ed., Volume 2; Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, and James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
English 297.001
MWF 11:00-11:50 a.m.
Survey of American Literature from 1865
Elizabeth Archuleta
This course covers literature from the Civil War through the twentieth century. During the course of the semester, we will develop our understanding of literature from this time period and learn about the historical and cultural contexts in which they exist. Our readings will be separated into three chronological divisions (1865-1914, 1914-1945, 1945-present), because these time periods are bordered by three wars that greatly contributed to American cultural transformation. We will consider shifts in literary taste and explore the choices that writers made by exploring larger literary movements such as Realism, Naturalism, Regionalism, Modernism, and Postmodernism.
Required texts include: The Norton Anthology of American Literature (6th edition);
Charles Alexander Eastman, From the Deep Woods to Civilization; Nella Larsen, Passing; Sandra Cisneros, House on Mango Street; N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain.
English 297.002
Th 7:00-9:30 p.m.
American Literature
Rebecca Chalmers
This survey course examines American literature from the mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, a particularly rich and important time in the development of American art and culture. Using The Heath Anthology of American Literature 2 as our primary text, we will explore the major writers and literary movements as well as some of the lesser-known writers and works of the period. Our discussions will focus on the cultural and historical contexts in which and from which these works arise. In addition to routine quizzes on readings, students will be expected to produce two brief papers, one of which will involve outside research, and to take both a midterm and a final exam.
English 298.310 (first half of semester)
English 298.330 (second half of semester)
Restricted course/Times arranged
Workshop in Literature or Writing
Rebecca Hooker
This workshop is a one-credit, non-graded (credit/no credit) course designed to help you prepare a strong Writing Proficiency Portfolio. We will focus on understanding the evaluation criteria, selecting appropriate work, and revising the proper contents of your portfolio for submission. We will also discuss effective cover letters and the portfolio procedures, including the interview. The workshop meets once a week with time available for individual conferences with the instructor.
English 304.001
TTh 12:30-1:45 p.m.
The Bible: Literature
staff
English 305.001
TTh 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Mythology
Ron Shumaker
Mythology is studied today as one of the great wellsprings of cultural expression. The approaches of Eliade, Campbell, and other recent theorists have emphasized the universal, archetypal interconnections of world mythology. Native American mythologies provide a productive test of that universalizing tendency, which draws heavily on Classical, Nordic, and Middle Eastern mythic traditions. This course will examine a key problem in myth study. Does such universalizing in fact represent a kind of cultural imperialism, by imposing the familiar patterns of well-known mythologies on those from lesser known, and very different, cultural sources? We will begin with an enjoyable survey of Greek and Norse mythology, proceed to the shared patterns of Native American mythologies, and then explore contrasting world-views as they express themselves in literary uses of mythology, with an extended focus on a Native American novel. Requirements include three unit tests, two short papers, and a synthesizing final exam.
English 315.001 (Call No. 20103)
TTh 12:30-1:45 p.m.
Jane Austen, Theater, and Film
Carolyn Woodward
We'll read closely Austen's novels Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, Emma, and Mansfield Park; study representations of cultural values in film adaptations of those novels; and investigate eighteenth-century theater practices that inform Mansfield Park.PLEASE NOTE: Although English 315.001 (Austen, Theater, and Film) does not appear in the official UNM Schedule of classes for spring 2003, this is a real course and will be offered this spring! ! The call number is 20103.
English 320.001
T 5:30-8:00 p.m.
Writing for Radio
David Dunaway
In this course we survey the craft of radio from a writer's perspective: how to research, organize, write, interview, and produce a documentary. A primer on making field recordings is included; the final segment of the class is devoted to critiquing class assignments. No prior coursework is required, but this and previous radio experience may prove helpful, alongside a love and respect for sound in its many forms.
Writing Radio is a cross-disciplinary seminar for those interested in analyzing how radio signifies and transmits meaning. The course is divided into three sections: Theory, Practice, and Praxis (the latter referring to the moment when theory and practice come together).
Students listen to classic radio documentaries and drama and discuss the relationship between arts, literature, and radiophonic communication. Considerable attention will be paid to mastering the unique format and grammar of radio: how it creates texts, its aesthetic parameters, and its practical limitations.
We will work from a reader prepared by the instructor and Radiotexte (also available from the instructor). The main assignments are a 3-5 page essay on an aspect of radio and treatments and scripts.
English 320.002
MWF 9:00-9:50 a.m.
Advanced Expository Writing: Classical Rhetorical Tropes
Jerry Shea
This is the writing course you would have taken five hundred years ago-or twenty-five hundred years ago. Your writing and your analysis of others' writing will be based upon classical rhetorical tropes. "Anadiplosis," "erotesis," "parrhesia," and "parecbasis" are not diseases; rather, these and a plethora of others are names of word and sentence and paragraph strategies that can still serve writers well. This is truly (Sophist)icated writing. Several essays to be written; others to be read and analyzed. Text: Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms.
English 320.003
times TBA
Advanced Expository Writing: Screenwriting
M. McDuffie
English 321.001
TTh 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Intermediate Fiction Writing
Marisa P. Clark
Now that you've learned the basics in English 221, you know something about character development, plot arcs, dialogue and setting and point of view, and showing instead of telling. So what comes next? English 321 is an intermediate-level class conducted as a workshop designed to hone the fiction-writing techniques you already have in place, as well as provide you with new tools in constructing literary short stories. Because I share Eudora Welty's view that "we may during actual writing get more lasting instruction ... from our own poor scratched-over pages," our primary texts will be the class's original writing, and the emphasis will be on revision, revision, and more revision. Students enrolled in this section of English 321 can expect to do numerous exercises, study and discuss the short stories of published authors, and draft and revise two original short stories. One story can be reused from 221; the second can be generated from exercises and/or ideas we discuss in our class.
Only the writing of fiction keeps fiction alive.
--Eudora Welty, "Words into Fiction," The Eye of the Story
REQUIRED TEXTS: Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft (6th edition) by Janet Burroway; Best American Short Stories 2002, edited by Sue Miller and Katrina Kenison
English 321.002
MWF 10:00-10:50 a.m.
Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction
Jack Trujillo
I believe that inside every first draft of a story is a deeper, more well-crafted story trying to break out. Our role in this class is to work past our first efforts to find the heart of the real story through thorough, often drastic, revision. Sometimes that means taking the story and turning it inside out and then standing it on its head. Sometimes it means going through a draft that isn't as good as what we started with in order to go back and make the original better than it was. It always means more than spellcheck, changing the name of the main character and moving the story setting from Tulsa to Oklahoma City. The first half of the semester we will concentrate on re-writing a story written for a previous writing class. Janet Burroway's text, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft will serve as both reader and craft toolbox in that effort. There will be regular written exercises. Students will also read and discuss the stories in the text. In the second half of the semester we will workshop a second story written for this class in response to a specific assignment. The class will operate in an atmosphere of mutual respect, light heartedness and intensity.Because discussion and workshop classes are dependent on the commitment of the participants in the process, I will expect regular attendance and consistent preparation of assigned material. Attendance at one outside live reading and analysis of one collection of short fiction are also requirements. At the end of the semester students will turn in two revised stories with a total length of 15-25 pages.Prerequisite: English 221 or other college-level fiction writing class.
English 321.003
MW 5:30-6:45 p.m.
Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction
Jack Trujillo
See description for English 321.002 above.
English 322.001
TTh 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry
Lisa Chavez
In this intermediate poetry workshop, we will try out a range of poetic forms from the traditional (sonnets, sestinas) to the less traditional (list poems, prose poems, persona poems). We'll do a lot of exercises in form and style to stretch your poetic muscles and to help you learn new techniques for crafting your poems.Our classes will be spent discussing poetic form, discussing your poems, and doing writing exercises. I'll expect you to do a number of exercises that may or may not result in more polished poems, and I'll expect you to produce a final portfolio of revised poems (some of which may have arisen from exercises; others may be new poems of your choice in any style or form).
English 322.002
MW 2:00-3:15 p.m.
Creative Writing: Poetry
Diane Thiel
This intermediate poetry writing course will build on the concepts introduced in 222 and incorporate workshop of student work. Class texts will address particular techniques or elements of poetry (i.e.: diction, perspective, image, rhythm, forms of poetry, narrative, etc.). Exercises and assignments will accompany discussion of these elements. As cultural perspective is an important aspect of poetic discourse, the assigned readings of poetry and essays from authors of various backgrounds will inform and enrich class discussion about the connections between culture, form and content. Students will keep a journal throughout the semester which will contain responses to readings, exercises, audio recordings, discussions, etc. Students will write one creative/critical essay and give a presentation on one of the books of poetry (or excerpts) selected for the class. Class portfolios, consisting of about 25 pages of poetry, including seven significantly revised pieces, will be due near the end of the semester.
English 351.001
MW 2:00-3:15 p.m.
Chaucer
Staff
Discerning students seek real liberation from oppression in Chaucerian delights, where the Canterbury Tales do not just reflect power relationships--eurocentrics vs. eccentrics, merchants vs. intellectuals, aristocrats vs. monks, landowners vs. peasants, women vs. patriarchy, machos vs. matriarchy. In Chaucer, these very real struggles are grounded in an intelligible discourse that emerges from both conditioned and timeless human experience. The Knight frees you from fate's oppression, the Wife of Bath from patriarchy, the Miller from surplus repression, the Clerk from matriarchy, the Merchant from an unreflecting everydayness. The tales as a whole provide escape from the silly susurrations of political correctness, the cacophonies of feigning fascism, the collective detritus and pompous illusions of post-modernism, and the random, grammatical drift of careless language. Midterm, final, and a five-to ten page paper. This course applies toward the minor in Medieval Studies.
English 352.001
TTh 12:30-1:45 p.m.
Shakespeare: Histories and Comedies
Cheryl Fresch
Approximately five of Shakespeare's histories and five of his comedies will constitute the primary reading list for this class, but students will also be responsible for the additional material provided by class lectures and the critical introductions and apparatus in The Norton Shakespeare. Class discussions, critical essays, and exams will focus on the characters, themes, plots, and poesy of these ten plays. Assignments: Two preliminary exams, one comprehensive final exam, three papers on assigned topics.
English 352.002
TTh 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Shakespeare: Histories and Comedies
Barry Gaines
The course will involve the close reading and analysis of a selection of Shakespeare's comedies and histories. Although lecture is sometimes used, discussion is encouraged. Emphasis is placed upon the individual student's responses to the plays. Shakespeare's development as a playwright will be stressed, and the qualities which mark the "problem plays," tragicomedies, and romances will be explored. There will be three examinations and four short working papers treating various aspects of the plays we are reading. Texts: The Comedy of Errors; A Midsummer Night's Dream; Twelfth Night; Measure for Measure; Cymbeline; The Winter's Tale; Richard II; Henry IV, Part 1; Richard III
.English 353.001
TTh 2:00 -3:15 p.m.
Shakespeare: Tragedies
David Jones
An in-depth study of seven major tragedies: Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Lear, Othello, and Macbeth. These are among the world's most famous works of literature, and taken together they present a stunning exploration into the fates of men and women, the societies in which they live, and the psychological pressures which bring them to happy or unhappy ends. My own perspective is both literary and theatrical, so we study the plays in terms of structure, poetry, context, and theatre history, using a combination of close reading and videotapes of many productions.
Requirements: midterm and final exams, one paper (2000-3000 words), and occasional quizzes on the reading.
English 353.002
TTh 5:30 -6:45 p.m.
Shakespeare: Tragedies
STAFF
English 354.001
TTh 9:30-10:45 a.m.
Milton
Cheryl Fresch
Milton's shorter poems, as well as his prose treatise Areopagitica, will be the primary texts for the first half of the semester. The second half of the semester will be devoted to Paradise Lost. Assignments: Two preliminary exams, a final exam, and three papers. The three papers will investigate sources or parallels for Milton's poetry, with each student determining what classical, biblical, or earlier English literary reference he or she wants to pursue.
English 360.001
TTh 9:30-10:45 a.m.
Hemingway
Robert E. Fleming
This course examines Hemingway's writing from the early short stories through his last published posthumous novel, The Garden of Eden. Forget what you think you know about Hemingway the macho hunter and fisherman and find out what Hemingway the artist was like.
Two exams, three papers ranging from 3 to 6 pages each.
Required texts: The Short Stories of EH, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea, The Garden of Eden. Optional text: Robert E. Fleming, The Face in the Mirror: Hemingway's Writers.
English 360.002
TTh 12:30-1:45 p.m.
Faulkner
Antonio Márquez
This course introduces students to the major work of the William Faulkner, the greatest American fiction writer of the twentieth century. We will provide critical analyses of the texts and examine the social, cultural and intellectual currents that influenced Faulkner and his work. Requirements: a midterm examination, a final examination, and a final essay. Texts include: Flags in the Dust, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!, The Hamlet, and Go Down, Moses.
English 360.003
TTh 2:00-3:15 p.m.
Virginia Woolf
Mary Power
This course will follow the progress of Virginia Woolf's career in fiction from A Voyage Out to The Years. Along the way we'll read Jacob's Room , Orlando, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and The Waves. We'll find time to deal with her fictive biography Flush, and discuss her important essay, A Room of One's Own. We'll end the course with a contemporary novel inspired by Virginia Woolf—Michael Cunningham's The Hours. There will be two tests ,two shorter papers, and lots of discussion.
English 360.004
Th 7:00-9:30 p.m.
Mark Twain
Gary Scharnhorst
This course concentrates on Mark Twain as a humorist and literary realist. It analyzes structural aspects of his writing, noting the recurrence of such characters as the mysterious stranger and such plot devices as court trials, mistaken identities, and rites of initiation. Placing his work in the context of his region and his time, we will discuss early examples of his local-color humor, The Innocents Abroad (1869), Roughing It (1872), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), The Prince and the Pauper (1882), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and some of his late, more cynical sketches and nouvella. Final grades will be based on two papers and a final examination.
English 360.005
MW 2:30-3:45 p.m.
Charles Dickens
Hugh Witemeyer
We will read five of Charles Dickens's best-known works, viewing his fiction in the context of his life, the social problems of his time, and the literary traditions which he inherited and transformed. The master storyteller will unfold before us the vast panorama of Victorian London, with its humor and pathos, its eccentric inhabitants and atmospheric by-ways. Writing assignments will include take-home exercises, a 12-15 page essay, and a final examination.
Texts: Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, and Bleak House; Paul Davis, Charles Dickens A to Z.
English 387.001/587
MWF 1:00-1:50 p.m.
Stylistics
Jerry Shea
What makes for good and graceful and memorable prose? In this course we shall try to find out, and tease out some rules. My own gurus in these matters include Joseph Williams, Winston Weathers, Richard Lanham, and Francis Christensen, among others. We shall work at the sentence and paragraph level, stretching, sometimes, into the short essay. Expect to do close analysis, to rub your nose in the prose. Text: Lanham, Analyzing Prose. This course may substitute for E320 or E420 in both the major and minor professional writing concentrations.
English 410.001
TTh 2:00-3:15 p.m.
Criticism and Theory
Hector A. Torres
This course is a general excursus into the state of modern and postmodern literary and critical theory. Our itinerary will rely not so much on the model of the line as cluster around names and issues, though history will be our constant guide. Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud provide the initial forays into the workings of modern literary theory. For metaphor and symbol we look to Saussure's linguistics and Levi-Strauss? Anthropology. Hegelian dialectics will not be slighted. Interpretations of Marx will fill the agenda under the names of Gramsci and Althusser, Baudrillard and Bourdieu. As deconstruction comes into view, Derrida, Heidegger, Kristeva, and others will wind and turn us into the field of cultural studies. There, Foucault, Irigarary, Cixous, Lacan, de Lauretis, Butler will orient us in the cultural dialogues taking place. Thus, we will engage and discuss the variety of critical experiences we inhabit as postmodern subjects.
English 411.002
TTh 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Honors Seminar: Literature and the Environment
Gary Harrison
This seminar for honors students focuses upon the relationship between literature and the environment in England and the United States in the early to mid nineteenth century. Drawing upon a few key literary works and from secondary readings in contemporary literary criticism and philosophy, we will ask what constitutes environmental literature and how such literature shapes environmental consciousness and action. One of our interests will be the interplay between British and American literature, as well as the transformations of representations of nature in the nineteenth century that still inform our contemporary understanding of our place in, and responsibility to, the environment. Major authors will include Jean Jacques Rousseau, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Dorothy and William Wordsworth, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mary Shelley, Herman Melville, and Charles Darwin. Secondary readings will include essays by Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schiller, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Michelle Serres, among others.
Requirements will include taking two or three quizzes, writing two short papers or one longer paper, and giving a fifteen-minute presentation on a topic of your choice related to our readings.
English 411.010/511
MWF 2:00-2:50 p.m.
Popular Culture and the Marketing of Native America
Elizabeth Archuleta
Throughout United States history, white Americans have simulated and endorsed a variety of Indian images. Whether positioned as a savage or as a noble savage, the "Indian" overwhelmingly has been located by white Americans within symbols that convey their struggles to define themselves as a nation or as individuals. No matter the position the "Indian" has occupied, white Americans have capitalized either materially or spiritually with these encounters. The commercialization of American Indians has been a long-running practice, and this course will examine how Native America has been marketed to a non-Native audience and to what end, but more importantly, our readings will focus on the critiques that Native peoples have leveled against representations and appropriations of Native identities and cultures. Our main texts include Robert Berkhofer, Jr., White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present, Philip Deloria, Playing Indian, and Ward Churchill, Fantasies of the Master Race. We will supplement these texts with fiction, poetry, film, comic books, advertisements, etc.
English 418.002/518.002
W 7:00-9:30 p.m.
Proposal and Grant Writing
STAFF
English 418.370/518.370
S 11:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. (first 8 weeks of semester)
Proposal and Grant Writing
Scott Sanders
In this eight-week, Saturday mid-day course, you will learn how to identify and evaluate grant and proposal opportunities, how to use basic to advanced elements of persuasive writing in an effective and ethical manner, how to analyze and address the rhetorical situations related to grant and proposal writing, how to apply elements of basic document design and compilation, and how to work with a team to produce a compelling proposal package. Working individually and in teams, you will produce documents related to the production of grants and proposals. Teams will at first function informally as peer writing/editing groups and, later, as formal proposal writing teams. Each class will be split into more or less equal thirds: lecture and presentation, computer and library research, and group drafting and composing. Assignments include 2-3 shorter (1-3pp) written assignments, an in-class essay exam, and one complete proposal package, portions of which may be graded as the entire package is being written and assembled. Individual and group oral presentations may also be required.
Text: Writing Proposals: Rhetoric for Managing Change, R. Johnson-Sheehan; photocopied articles and other materials on electronic and regular reserve in Zimmerman Library.
English 418.371/518.371
S 11:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. (second 8 weeks of semester)
Proposal and Grant Writing
STAFF
English 420.001/520
TTh 2:00-3:15 p.m.
Creative Writing Workshop: Nonfiction
The Memoir: Questions of Travel
Gregory Martin
There are too many waterfalls here
Think of the long trip home.
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?
Where should we be today?
Is it right to be watching strangers in a play
in this strangest of theatres?
—Elizabeth Bishop, from "Questions of Travel"
This is a writing workshop that focuses on the intersection between memoir and travel, and how in the travel memoir, as opposed to travel writing as literary journalism, the subject is not only place but also the self. How does travel, itself, shape identity? How do specific places alter us? How do both memory and forgetting shape us, and shape our writing about real places, lives and events. We will also explore that blurred boundary where memory is both fiction and truth, and so where memoir is necessarily both truth and invention. We will explore the obligation memoirists have to drama and to real lives: to their subjects, and to their readers. And in all this, we will explore how craft technique informs and guides. Nabokov, in Speak, Memory, writes that one task of the memoirist is the following of thematic design, of pattern and order, through one's life. We will be seeking those patterns, attempting to make larger sense, to see how our personal lives participate in the human condition.
Over the course of the semester, each member will write two pieces of memoir, each of which will be revised. My hope is that the course will push you stylistically and technically, and encourage you to take emotional risks, to write what you could not have written before, to raise your standards for what you consider good writing, and then to meet those standards through the development of the habit of art. Finally, in order to write well, we must read well, and read as writers, and so this class will combine a balance between workshopping and the discussion of published authors.
English 420.002
TTh 9:30-10:45 a.m.
Rhetoric, Politics, and Public Education
Wanda Martin
Universal free public education is a key element in creating and maintaining a democratic society. Although American public schools today educate a larger proportion of the population to higher levels than ever before in our history, we're presently besieged by rhetoric about the failure of public schools: Children, especially poor and minority children, are "trapped in failing schools." Teachers and administrators must be "held accountable" for the failure of our public schools to educate children properly. Programs and instruction, weÕre told, must be shaped by "scientifically based research," and parents should be able to "exercise choice" to place their children in public schools that are "right for their families." The stakes in arguments about educational policy and practice are very high.
This course in rhetorical analysis and advanced argumentative writing will consider how these arguments serve political as well as educational purposes. Our work in the course will be to examine current arguments about educational policy in the light of rhetorical theory to better understand how arguers in a democratic society make arguments to influence public policy, not only in education but in other areas as well. We'll use a scheme of analysis based primarily on the work of rhetorician Kenneth Burke. Work requirements include written analytic exercises every week, thoughtful discussion in class, and three short (6-8 pages) papers examining rhetorical artifacts (articles, letters to the editor, op-ed pieces, policy documents . . .) that deal with public education or related topics. Readings and textbook, if any, will be identified in the syllabus in January.
This is an advanced writing course to which students should bring significant skills in reading, writing, and analytical thinking. I recommend as prerequisite courses English 220 as a minimum and (ideally) English 320. Please e-mail any questions about the course.
English 420.003/520
Th 5:30-8:00 p.m.
Publishing
David Dunaway
This course introduces students to the publishing industry, in the U.S. and internationally, from the multiple perspectives of the author, the editor, the agent, and the publisher. If the tired axiom "publish or perish" remains true—and every indication suggests that this is so—for those planning a future in publishing or the academy, this course offers survival skills for future employment and success in university life.
The class begins with a survey of trends, then a history of publishing in the U.S., followed by an overview of ownership and control in the modern era. We will discuss procedures and standards for submissions of articles and book proposals to publishers of literary, scholarly, technical, and trade/general-adult materials. We examine in detail the roles of editors and agents in accepting manuscripts-with an emphasis on the increasing digitization (e-books) and globalization of publishing/media activities. Any writer interested in these topics is welcome to join us.
English 420.004/520
TTh 2:00-3:15 p.m.
Science and Medical Writing
Janet Yagoda Shagam
Science and medical writers translate complex, vocabulary-intensive and sometimes frightening information into easily understood and audience-sensitive reading materials. Students enrolled in Science and Medical Writing 420/520 will be given several "real" assignments as their introduction to the "art and craft" of writing for the public. Students, working in small groups, will produce documents for clients that may include UNMH physicians, veterinarians, and various City of Albuquerque departments. The class format will include lecture, guest presentations, class critiques, and student presentations.
Some of the topics we will cover include: readability (writing for different audiences), writing for newspapers, patient education, writing for popular healthcare magazines, writing "trade" and text books, writing for professional journals, working with editors, working with clients, interviewing patients, interviewing medical experts, getting started as a medical writer, elements of style and supporting reference materials, and ethics.Our text will be Barbara Gastel's Health Writer's Handbook (Ames: Iowa St Univ Press, 1998).
English 421.001
MW 2:30-3:45 p.m.
Advanced Creative Writing Workshop: Prose Fiction
Daniel Mueller
Every piece of fiction, at whatever stage of its metamorphosis, contains the blueprint of its ultimate realization. Responding constructively to another's fiction is as great an act of the imagination as writing one's own fiction and requires just as much as practice. While student-generated work will serve as the primary text of the course, we will also read and discuss Aristotle's Poetics as well as a global sampling of short stories by writers from around the world.
Required Texts: Aristotle's Poetics, The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories (Daniel Halpern, ed.)
English 421.002
TTh 11:00-12:15 p.m.
Advanced Creative Writing Workshop: Prose Fiction
Julie Shigekuni
The premise for this course is that strong content arises out of identifying and carefully nurturing each layer of a story. As such, we may begin by examining a story you wrote in an earlier fiction class, focusing critique on possibilites for development, asking questions like: What is the heart of this story? What do we know about the main character? What does the beginning lead us to expect? How are our expectations met or thwarted? What do we love, desire, fear? These basic questions emerge as central to all good stories and bear the heart of the storyteller—so come prepared for scrutiny, and for celebration too. We'll do some experiments, shaping and reshaping stories from various angles, and then, possibly, we'll begin something new. Each student is expected to write daily, and to create and revise a minimum of two stories.
English 421.003
TTh 5:30-6:45 p.m.
Advanced Creative Writing Workshop: Prose Fiction
Marisa P. Clark
The goal of this advanced-level class is both to sharpen the fiction-writing techniques you already have in place and to reach beyond them, to take risks in imprinting your work with your original voice and style. By now, you should already have a well-developed sense of the strengths and weaknesses of your writing. Together with the other members of the class, you will design and pool a group of exercises and choose among them for those that might prove most beneficial to the improvement of your writing. Naturally, the focus of the class will be on workshopping; each student will draft two new stories, identify in them the kernel of "inevitability" in their telling, and revise them significantly for a portfolio due at the end of the semester. In addition to your stories, we will read numerous stories by Alice Munro and Junot Díaz, discuss each story thoroughly and thoughtfully, and intensively examine the distinct narrative approach that infuses and links each author's body of work.
Required texts: Selected Stories by Alice Munro, Drown by Junot Díaz, and Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction by Charles Baxter.
English 422.001
TTh 2:00-3:15 p.m.
Advamced Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry
Lisa Chavez
While this advanced poetry workshop will focus primarily on discussion and critique of student work, we will also read and discuss several books of poetry by contemporary writers as a way of expanding the repertoire of our poetic skills. In addition, participants in the class will write a paper analyzing the craft of a contemporary poet of their choice, and then present the work of this poet to the rest of the class. We'll also do short invention exercises to keep the creative impulses flowing, and will discuss all issues related to the process of writing, from inspiration to revision to publication.
Theatre 438/538
TTh 12:30
The Contemporary Repertory
David Richard Jones
This is a course that reviews the written drama of the past half dozen years. Beginning somewhere in the mid-1990s, we read plays from the US and Britain, as well as elsewhere, which show the range of styles and concerns in the contemporary repertory.
Authors we will read include Rebecca Gilman, Sarah Kane, Moisés Kaufman, Tony Kushner, Neil Labute, Jonathan Larson, Martin McDonagh, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Mark Ravenhill.Requirements: midterm and final exams, one paper (2000-3000 words), and occasional quizzes on the reading.
English 442.001/542
TTh 4:00-5:15 p.m.
Rhetoric: Major Texts
Charles Paine
This course surveys some of the major texts in the Western rhetorical tradition, beginning with the Ancient Greek Sophists, through the Roman and Medieval rhetorical thinkers, and finishing with the Scottish Common Sense rhetoricians and their intellectual progeny, who created and implemented the first college composition courses in America. I will try to ensure that the important ideas surrounding these texts are investigated, so each of you will attain a respectable level of "rhetorical literacy," but I expect students to take these basic ideas and do something new with them in their own written work. We'll spend the most time on Greek and Roman texts, and then we'll hurry up toward the end of the semester to get to the end of the eighteenth century.
There will be two papers, a shorter one and a longer one, as well as some reading quizzes. Texts include: The Rhetorical Tradition (Bizzell and Herzberg, 2nd edition); A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms (Richard A. Lanham, 2nd ed); A New History of Classical Rhetoric (George A. Kennedy).
English 445.001/545
W 4:00-6:30 p.m.
History of the English Language
Helen Damico
This course surveys the internal history of English, in its political and cultural context. As an introductory course, it is meant for students who have had no previous study in linguistics or in language. The objective of the course is to prepare students for further study in English language and linguistics. The arrangement of the syllabus is chronological and descriptive in approach. It traces the phonological and grammatical development of English from prehistory to the present. The syllabus offers a somewhat fuller treatment of Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English (Shakespeare's English) on the assumption that familiarity with the speech of these periods will provide the student with an easier entry into the literature. The number of periods of "renaissance" of English as the "vernacular" tongue of the learned in contrast to Latin and the attendant political climate will be explored. A midterm, quizzes, final, and a paper. Attendance is mandatory.
English 450.001/550
TR 5:30-6:45 p.m.
Beowulf: The First English Epic
Helen Damico
This is the introductory course to Beowulf, and as such it is primarily a linguistic and literary study of the first English epic. It is meant to lay the groundwork for an advanced seminar in Beowulf. The student will engage in short, introductory paleographical and metrical exercises on selected portions of the poem. This will allow the student to become closely acquainted with the manuscript (Cotton Vitellius A.xv) and to begin to arrive at an understanding about the making of an epic. Over half of the poem will be translated from the original, although students are required to know the entire poem in translation. Yet, this is not a course that focuses only on translation. Rather, it attempts to expose the text as it is--the work of a master craftsman--and not as how various translators have presented it. Topics discussed in the course will include: Old English poetic language and form; formula and formulaic systems; Old English versification; the history of the manuscript; the dating of the poem; heroic women in Beowulf; the existential warrior; Germanic heroic tradition. Course requirements: midterm; short exercises in metrics and paleography; final; and, for graduate students, an edition (following Klaeber's format) of a ten- to twenty-line segment of Beowulf). Pre-requisite: English 449 Old English, or the equivalent. Attendance is mandatory. This course applies toward the Minor in Medieval Studies and the Ph.D. Concentration in Medieval Studies.
English 453.001/553
TTh 2:00-3:15 p.m.
Renaissance Drama
Barry Gaines
English 456.001/556
TTh 12:30-1:45 p.m.
Victorian Frames of Reference
Ron Shumaker
The literature of Victorian England exhibits a dazzling richness, variety, and plenitude. To organize an analysis of that literature, this course will frame the era with George Eliot's Adam Bede, a defining text in the theory and practice of Literary Realism and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, a later novel reflective of the pessimism and Naturalism which develop in late Victorian literature. These texts will engage us in the issues of class, gender, cultural change, and literary theory which shape much of the prose and poetry of the time. Those frames of reference will also let us explore the theories of art, the artist, and the function of art in society which preoccupied Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Ruskin, the PreRaphaelites, the Aesthetes, and the Decadents. Our study will construct an understanding of the literary era out of which (and sometimes against which!) Modernism and Postmodernism emerged. Course requirements will include a quiz on each novel, a midterm exam, a final exam, two short papers and, for graduate students, a more extensive paper.
English 459.001/559
TTh 4:00-5:15 p.m.
Post-Modern Irish Literature
Mary Power
In this contemporary literature course, we'll read poetry by Eavan Boland, Paul Muldoon and Seamus Heaney. We'll look at plays by Brian Friel (Dancing at Lughnasa and Translations) and Martin McDonagh (The Beauty Queen of Leenane). At that point we'll turn our attention to fiction and consider recent work by Roddy Doyle (Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, The Woman Who Walked into Doors), Patrick McCabe (The Butcher Boy) , Edna O'Brien (Down by the River), William Trevor ( Felicia's Journey, Fools of Fortune), and John McGahern (Amongst Women). There will be two papers of medium length and two tests.
English 462.001/562
W 7:00-9:30 p.m.
American Realism
Gary Scharnhorst
This course focuses upon American fiction of the Gilded Age, the period between the end of the Civil War and the close of the nineteenth century. During the term, we will consider the strategy of literary realism and its several variations (e.g., critical or social realism, psychological realism, local color, "veritism," and naturalism). Readings will include two novels by Mark Twain, short fiction by Henry James, Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome, Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, and Charles Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman. Final grades will be based on two papers and two examinations.
English 465.001/565
TTh 12:30-1:45 p.m.
Chicana/o Narrative
Recovering Regional Literature
Jesse Alemán
While the "Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage" project has expanded the literary history and canon of contemporary Chicana/o literature well before the nineteenth century, this course focuses on the emergence and production of regional Mexican American literature in the Southwest from 1848 to 1958. The course will examine regional literature from California, Texas, and New Mexico to understand how Mexican Americans from each region construct competing, if not contradictory, notions of local, ethnic identities that respond to national concerns such as race, class, gender, dispossession, and citizenship rights over the hundred years after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
English 472.001/572
M 7:00-9:30 p.m.
Contemporary Literature
Robert Gish
English 472.002/572
MWF 2:00-2:50
The Twentieth Century
Antonio Márquez
Ranging from "Modernism" to "Postmodernism" and concentrating on textual analysis and criticism, this course considers some of the most important, influential, and enduring novels of the twentieth century.
Requirements include three examinations. Students enrolled for 572 credit will submit a term paper.
Texts include: Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Proust, Swann's Way; Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man; Wharton, The House of Mirth; Kafka, The Trial; Woolf, To the Lighthouse; Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!; Camus, The Plague; Nabokov, Lolita; García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude.
English 499.001
W 12:00-12:50 p.m.
Internship Seminar
Richard Johnson-Sheehan
All English majors and minors, not just those in the Professional Writing concentration, may apply for and complete an Internship as part of their undergraduate work. If you are about to begin or about to complete an internship, or if you have completed an internship during the past two semesters, see Professor Johnson Sheehan for an add card to the Internship Seminar. During the first week of class, come to the Wednesday meeting to receive a syllabus and schedule for the term. The class will meet about seven times during the semester to discuss topics of interest to enrolled students and to others seeking internships. Seminar topics include reading the job ads, writing job applications and resumes, searching the Internet for jobs, building a professional portfolio, and general problems and successes with ongoing or completed internships. Students must attend the seminar meetings and complete two documents: an internship proposal (1-3 pages) and a career portfolio. In addition, students give two oral presentations: at least one brief progress report and a more formal (about 20 minutes) final report on their internship or job search.
This course is credit/no credit.
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Department of English
