Spring 2004 Graduate Courses

Course information is organized in the following format:

Course Number
Course Time
Course Title
Instructor
Course description.

English 510.001/Comp Lit 500
W 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Theory Matters
Gary Harrison
This course examines the history of critical theory from its earliest formulations through the present. As we map significant changes in criticism and theory, we will also attend to the formation of literary criticism as an institutional practice, questioning the value and function of literary theory today. For the first six to eight weeks our approach will be primarily chronological, beginning with Gorgias and Plato and running up through the nineteenth century After that, the course will become more dialogical, often pairing a contemporary text with earlier ones (especially Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud) in order to facilitate a dialogue between past and present. It should become apparent that contemporary critical theory rounds back to questions found in even the earliest critical texts—questions such as what is literature; what is its function; what truth, if any does it represent; what is its value; and what is the socio-historical ground of that value? We'll use the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, a recent collection of essays that offers a good deal of flexibility as well as historical breadth, supplemented as necessary by e-reserves and in-class reports. To help place critical theory in our current practice—at a time when some have pronounced the twilight or death of literary theory —we will use Vincent Leitch's Theory Matters, which assesses the reconfigurations of literary theory in the academy from the 1970s to the present. Requirements will include a shorter and longer paper, an in-class presentation, and a presentation in an end-of-semester conference/colloquium.

English 511.001/411.001
TTh 12:30-1:45 p.m.
Drugs and Literature
David Jones
Ever since the increased accessibility of opium around 1800, authors have taken drugs or written about those who do. From these experiences have come many remarkable works. This course studies an assortment of literature from the past two hundred years (a) by writers who were interested in the experience of taking drugs, and/or (b) by writers who were taking drugs when they wrote, and/or (c) about characters who take drugs. The literature concerns various drugs—opium, cocaine, marijuana, heroin, LSD, ecstasy—and we will discuss various related topics, including criminality, religious experience, and the imagination.
Authors on the syllabus include Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas DeQuincey, Charles Baudelaire, Lewis Carroll, Robert Louis Stevenson, Eugene O'Neill, Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, The Beatles, Hunter S. Thompson, Jay McInerney, Carrie Fisher, and Irvine Welsh.
Two exams, six quizzes, and one major paper. Lecture and discussion. No field trips.

English 513.001/413.001
TTh 12:30-1:45 p.m.
Science, Environmental and Medical Writing
Janet Yagoda Shagam
Science, environmental and medical writers translate complex, vocabulary-intensive and sometimes frightening information into easily understood and audience-sensitive reading materials. Students enrolled in Science, Environmental and Medical Writing 413/513 will have “real” assignments as their introduction to the “art and craft” of writing for the public. Students, working solo or in small groups, will write documents for clients who may include UNMH physicians as well as UNM and City of Albuquerque scientists. The class format will include lecture, guest presentations, class critiques and student presentations.
Some of the topics we will cover will include:
• Readability – writing for different audiences
• Giving meaning to numbers
• Patient education
• Writing for popular healthcare and science magazines
• Writing “trade” and text books
• Writing for professional journals
• Working with editors
• Working with clients
• Interviewing patients
• Interviewing medical and scientific experts
• Elements of style and supporting reference materials
• Research, topical specialties and learning curves
• Steps to a writing career
Text Book:Gastel, B. Health Writer's Handbook. Iowa State University Press, Ames Iowa, 1998

English 514.001/414.001
TTh 9:30-10:45 a.m.
Documentation
Charles Paine
We're going to tackle that mainstay and bugbear of technical writing, documentation writing, which includes everything from printed owner's manuals to employee manuals to online help systems. We'll try to discover what separates good documentation from ordinary (or lousy and amateurish) documentation, what separates the hacker from the pro. We'll find out that writers of good manuals think about what they're doing in certain ways, that they not only write clear prose but also design their manuals in strategic ways. We'll use two books about design and various resources about documentation available at Zimmerman reserves. We'll examine and critique documentation throughout the class and, most important, we'll produce documentation, a lot of it. Some will be in print format, some in electronic online format.
Requirements: Some exercises in procedures-writing and design, presentations, class participation, and several projects (some collaborative).
Texts: Robin Williams, The Non-Designer's Design Book and The Non-Designer's Type Book.

English 515.001
Th 5:30-8:00 p.m.
Publishing
David Dunaway
This seminar offers writers and graduate students perspective on the publishing industries, in the U.S. and internationally, from the multiple perspectives of the author, editor, agent, publisher, and reader. If the tired axiom “publish or perish” remains true of those planning a future in publishing or the academy—as every indication suggests—this course offers survival skills, for future employment and success in university life. The class begins with a history of publishing in the U.S., followed by an overview of a media/cultural studies approach to ownership and control in the modern era. We discuss procedures and standards for submission of articles and book proposals to publishers of literary, scholarly, and technical work. We examine in detail the roles of editors and agents in circulating and accepting manuscripts—with an emphasis on the increasing globalization of publishing/media activities. This course is designed for the graduate writing curriculum but any writer interested in these topics is welcome to join us.

English 517.001/417.001
T 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Editing
Lynn Beene
A study of editing not only as the application of grammatical rules and terms but also as marking copy with appropriate copyediting symbols, the nature of substantive vs. surface editing and of rhetorical vs. rule governed editing, the rudiments of typography and layout, and, at least to some extent, the impact of computerized text editing/word processing. You should leave the course knowing what the difference between 'en' and 'em' is but also theme/rheme, the definitions of editing, the basic marks proofreaders and editors use, the basic grammatical operations editors use everyday, the history of publishing, and some basic practices of editing and copyediting (e.g., the ethics of editing, editing literature, electronic editing, relationships with authors, elements of graphic design). Texts include: Professor Packet; The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed.; and Strunk and White's Elements of Style

English 518.001
TTh 2:00-3:15 p.m.
Writing Proposals and Grants
Richard Johnson-Sheehan
This course will study the practice and theory of writing proposals and grants. In all business and technical workplaces, the development of proposals is critical toward determining what an organization will do, how it will do it, and who will receive the resources for the project. Similarly, as people in the arts, humanities, and sciences are aware, grants are the lifeblood of their programs. This course will give you the opportunity to study the purpose and theory behind grants and proposals. We will then discuss the rhetoric of these documents, demonstrating how their form, content, style, and design work together to create a persuasive package. Finally, you will be asked to write a few grants or proposals of your own.

This course is designed for people who want to write grants or proposals professionally in the arts, humanities, sciences, or business. It should appeal to English majors who want to be professional grant/proposal writers or non-English majors who need to write grants and proposals for their occupation.

English 521.001
M 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Creative Writing: Prose Fiction
Julie Shigekuni
Your fiction will be at the center of this workshop. Each participant will receive a minimum of two opportunities to have their work read and discussed by members of the workshop, and these critiques will be supplemented with frequent meetings with the instructor. In conference we might analyze together what has been said about your work in class—or I might recommend readings, or suggest experiments aimed at developing your voice or knowledge of craft. Course work is augmented by an occasional assignment and by weekly readings of contemporary short fiction.

English 521.002
T 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Creative Writing: Prose Fiction
Kathleen Acala
Why do we tell stories? "The romantic novelist Georgette Heyer kept few fan-letters," says AS Byatt," but I saw two - one from a man who had laughed at one of her comic fops on the trolley going to a life-threatening operation, and one from a Polish woman who had kept her fellow prisoners alive during the war by reciting, night after night, a Heyer novel she knew by heart." Stories are a necessity, like food and air.

In this class, we will study the art of storytelling as adapted to the written word. In particular, we will explore the use of the framed tale, which sets up certain expectations in the reader, while offering the writer a wide variety of possibilities. We will jointly devise a frame, and individually write a set of tales that fit within it. We will also workshop at least one other story by each student, and complete a variety of exercises and readings designed to strengthen our story-telling muscles.

In addition, each participant will prepare a brief report on a tale collection, or a novel written in the storytelling tradition. At the end of the class, participants will present new work.
Required texts for English 521:
On Histories and Stories, by AS Byatt, 2000; ISBN 0-674-00451-5; paper, ISBN 0099283832
The Best American Short Stories 2003, Walter Mosley, Editor ISBN 0-618-19733-8

English 522.001
T 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Creative Writing: Poetry
Diane Thiel
This graduate course will focus primarily on workshop of students' writing. Because students arrive in a graduate workshop with a variety of backgrounds, styles, and interests in poetry, we will engage in ongoing discussions about lineage and the different schools of thought in poetry. The course will include some exploration of writing which might defy genre classification. The course will also involve some focus on the theory and practice of translating poetry and on prose written about the art. Students will write one critical essay or review and give a presentation. The essay might respond to selected poems/poets in a “personal” way (as a writer engaged in the art), as in several of the assigned readings. As students write and collect their poems together for the course portfolio, they will be thinking about connective themes, etc. in the development of a body of work: the graduate thesis. Workshops, as well as individual and class assignments, will sometimes focus on this future goal as well. Portfolios of 35 pages, including about ten significantly revised pieces, will be due near the end of the semester.

English 523.001
Th 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Creative Writing: Nonfiction
The Memoir
Greg Martin
William Maxwell, in So Long, See You Tomorrow, writes, “When we talk about the past, we lie with every breath we take.” Memory is always configured on a gap—to remember suggests forgetfulness, the loss upon which memory is founded. In this sense, memoir is, first, a story, and second, a record of something that happened. So from the beginning in this course, we will qualify the lousy term “non-fiction” or worse, “creative nonfiction.”

This is a writing workshop that focuses on how both memory and forgetting shape us, and shape our writing about real lives and events. We will explore that blurred boundary where memory is both fiction and truth, and where memoir is both truth and invention.
Having said this, we will also explore the real obligations that memoirists have to real lives: to their subjects, and to their readers, to the “truth” (whatever that is). And in all this, we will explore how craft technique informs and guides. Nabokov, in Speak, Memory, writes that the true task of autobiography 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.

It is assumed that those who take this class will have specific projects to undertake, either parts of a longer work, or self-contained essays. Over the course of the semester, each member will write two pieces of memoir, each of which will be 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.
Texts: Vivian Gornick's Fierce Attachments; James Galvin's The Meadow; Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face; Harry Crews' Autobiography of a Place: A Childhood; Tobias Wolff's In Pharoah's Army; Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran.

English 540.002/440.002
MWF 10:00-10:50 a.m.
Indo-European Language and Culture
(Cross-listed with LING 490.002/590.002; ANTH 410.002/510.002)
Douglas Simms
What do Krishna, Zarathushtra, Buddha, Homer, Julius Caesar, Good King Wencelas, Cú Chulainn and Beowulf all have in common? They were all speakers of Indo-European languages! Using comparative Indo-European mythology as a starting point, this course will introduce students to the language and culture of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, as well as their developments into the Indo-Iranian, Greek, Anatolian, Italic, Slavic, Celtic and Germanic language families. No previous knowledge of the above languages is required, though students will have the opportunity to read short, fully-glossed texts in original languages. In addition to studying the phonological and morphological structure of Indo-European languages, we will also use etymology and the Comparative Method of linguistics to explore aspects of Indo-European religion, poetry, warfare, taboo, social structure, and associated problems of Indo-European archaeology.
Texts: Mallory, J.P. In Search of the Indo-Europeans. Puhvel, J. Comparative Mythology. Plus supplemental readings

English 545.001/445.001
MWF 1:00-1:50 p.m.
History of the English Language
Jerry Shea
A long look back at the language most of us have been using all ourlives: where it came from, how it has evolved, and so forth. We will study both what is called the “outer history” (those historical forces that shaped the language) and what is called the “inner history” (the changes themselves: phonological, morphological, syntactical, etc.). Be ready for the Great Vowel Shift and the making of the OED. Text: Millward, A Biography of the English Language.

English 551.001/451.001
M 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Middle English Heroes, Saints, and Lovers
Anita Obermeier
This course is designed for students brave enough to join our adventure-filled quest to explore the mysteries of medieval minds, texts, and art from the Norman Conquest to Malory and to relish in that period's great variety of literary forms. We start this historical, linguistic, and literary enterprise with the Bayeux Tapestry, art with text, fighting alongside Anglo-Saxon warriors. Then we will pray with English saints, sleuth with historians, learn the art of courtly love from medieval knights and ladies, look at the nature of God with mystics, fiddle with medieval minstrels, and watch biblical drama unfold. Depending on the difficulty of the Middle English dialects, texts will be read either in Middle English or translation and include the Owl and the Nightingale, The Lais of Marie de France, a selection of romances, Pearl, The Book of Margery Kempe, excerpts from Piers Plowman, the Showings of Julian of Norwich, Malory's Le Morte Darthur, Osbern Bokenham's A Legend of Good Women, the York Mystery Plays, and a smattering of lyrics.

English 553.001/453.001
TTh 12:30-1:45 p.m.
The Seventeenth Century: Attacking Authority
Cheryl Fresch
We will read, discuss, and criticize the non-dramatic poetry and prose of the earlier seventeenth century in English 453/553. In other words, the traditional sense of a literary survey will help to structure this course. As a major characteristic of the period (1603-1660), anti-authoritarianism, however, will also help to structure this course. The revolt against Petrarchan love will be one expression of the anti-authoritarianism that we will closely consider, and to do that, we will first read Petrarch's Canzoniere, as well as some of the most recent criticism of desire. With Christopher Hill as a preliminary guide into the complexities of the social situation that was the English revolution, we will proceed to focus on other expressions of the anti-authoritarianism of the age, and students here will themselves lead the way, working in groups defined by common literary-critical interests.

English 555.001/455.001
Th 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Eighteenth Century Literature
A “noble and uncommon union of science and admiration”:
The British Enlightenment, 1730-1800
Carolyn Woodward
During the later Enlightenment, a massive charge of intellectual and political energy fired people to question and even replace absolute authority, under the guidance of reason. But “reason” cannot contain this period of high passion, in which, living in a time of nearly constant warfare, English people produce a literature of outburst. Middle- and working-class writers explode into print, as do women of all classes. Global explorations become colonial exploitation. Sexual and racial differences evolve into their modern shapes within emergent notions of national identity, and various kinds of difference interrelate to push at the limits of normalcy. Exuberant, troubled, and profound conversation marks the literature of this period, as people seek that “uncommon union” of reason and passion through which they may shape community. Writers converse with readers, with other writers, and within their texts, especially in the period's greatest literary achievement, the novel, and also in satire and the gothic, stage plays, memoirs and biography, periodical literature, and narrative poetry and art.

Readings include novels by Henry Fielding, Charlotte Lennox, and Jane Austen; satire by Jane Collier; engravings by William Hogarth; plays by David Garrick, Catherine Clive, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan; gothic tales by Horace Walpole; and poetry by James Thomson, Anne Finch, Thomas Gray, Oliver Goldsmith, Stephen Duck, and Mary Collier. Perhaps more than any other single writer, Samuel Johnson grappled with Enlightenment ideals: we'll read selections from his poetry, periodical literature, and letters; excerpts from his Dictionary, his “oriental” tale Rasselas, his critical biographies The Lives of the Poets and his autobiographical Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland; and selections from Johnson biographies by James Boswell and Hester Thrale Piozzi. A packet of readings on empire will include selections of writings from and about the Mughal Empire and the Ottoman Empire; excerpts from slave narratives by Olaudah Equiano and others, and English abolitionist writings.
Requirements: brief weekly reflections, one historical research report, one term paper and presentation.

English 559.001/459.001
TTh 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Contemporary Irish Poetry
Mary Power
This course will center on the achievement of poets writing today. We'll begin by going back a bit -- though not so far back as Yeats -- to look at poems by Richard Murphy, Tom Kinsella and Brendan Kennelly. We'll focus on the poems of three deservedly well known writers -- Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland and Paul Muldoon. We'll read poems by feminists such as Eilean Ni Chuillean and Medb McGuckian, and poets with ties to the North such as Ciaran Carson and Tom Paulin. The student will gain from this course a sense of contemporary Irish history; the Irish as keen observers and world travelers and a new knowledge of poetic experimentation since poetry written in Ireland often suggests a foundation in the Irish as well as the English language. There will be two tests and two papers.

English 560.001
TTh 9:30-10:45 a.m.
American Literature: Nineteenth Century
Transcendentalism
Dieter Schulz
A sprint through many of the important texts and authors of nineteenth-century America, this course is intensive, extensive, and fast-paced. We will consider representative writers of the period and such major literary movements as Transcendentalism and Realism.
Texts: Cooper, The Pioneers; Emerson, Selections; Thoreau, Walden and "Civil Disobedience"; Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales; Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter; Melville, Great Short Works; Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Dickinson, Final Harvest; Whitman, Leaves of Grass; James, The Portrait of a Lady; Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes; Chopin, The Awakening; Crane, Great Short Works.

English 563.001
MWF 2:00-2:50 p.m.
Modern American Literature
Hugh Witemeyer.
This course will survey some of the major works of American literature published between 1900 and 1945. Students will write a book report, a research essay, a midterm examination, and a final examination. The class will include undergraduates as well as graduate students.
Texts: Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio; Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop; William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken: A Selection of Robert Frost's Poems; Ernest Hemingway, The Complete Short Stories; Langston Hughes, Selected Poems; Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night.

English 564.001/464.001
Th 7:00-9:15 p.m.
The American Indian in American Literature
Stephen Brandon
In this class, we will explore the history of American Literature as it constructs, employs and is formed by various conceptions of American Indians, including Indians as prototypical Americans, as noble savages, as dangerous savages, as a dying people, as objects of science study, and as obstacles to manifest destiny. In the process, you will be given an overview of the literature surrounding the United State's colonialization of Indian Country and will explore the roles played by literature, both as texts and as an institution, in reflecting, forming, maintaining and challenging the ideologies that justified and continue to justify American colonization of Native America. We will read from a variety of genres and authors, both canonical and non-canonical; authors you might recognize include Smith, Rowlandson, Jefferson, Franklin, Irving, Cooper, Throeau, Emerson, Remington and Twain. Graduate students will be asked to do two presentations and two papers (8-10 pages) or one paper (8-10 pages) that is then developed into a longer, 20 page paper. Undergraduates will take two exams, one at midterm and one at the end of the semester and be asked to produce one research paper (12-15 pages). Everyone will write short, weekly responses that are published on a class listserv.

English 565.016/465.016
TTh 2:00-3:15 p.m.
Chicano/a 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 the Southwestern states—Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas—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 568.001/468.001
TTh 2:00-3:15 p.m.
Asian American Women Writers
Julie Shigekuni
Our ethnicity, race, and gender are defined both by how we are seen and how we see ourselves. We'll look at how Asian American women are constructed by longtime masters Maxine Hong Kingston and Joy Kogawa as well as by emerging writers Carolyn Hwang and Ruth Ozeki, alongside other fiction writers, poets, and filmmakers. We'll read Trinh Minh-ha and Lisa Lowe to examine historical, political, and social contexts as well as the thorny issue of creating a canon of Asian women's literature. In turn, we'll explore ethnic identity in our own lives. While previous creative writing courses are not a prerequisite, participants will invent oral and written narratives that reflect the reader's understanding and engage the writer's voice and imagination.

English 573.001/473.001
TTh 2:00-3:15 p.m.
Postmodernism
Feroza Jussawalla
This graduate and undergraduate combined course will introduce students to the theory and evolution of postmodernism. Postmodernism relies heavily on intertextualiy as a technique of creativity. We will be exploring this idea of intertextuality by looking at the ancient Chinese epic of the Monkey King and how it has been re-written by the novelists Timothy Mo (The Monkey King), Gerald Vizenor (Griever), and Maxine Hong Kingston (Trip Master Monkey). The course will begin with Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, which is a loose re-write of James Joyce's Ulysses, which we will explore only tangentially and then we will move on to the Monkey King saga. There will be two short papers and a longer research paper. Students will be encouraged to do papers on "postmodern novels" not in the course such as those by Don Delillo, Martin Amis etc. We might read some Joyce Carol Oates to coincide with her Lannan lecture.

English 587.001/487.001
TTh 2:00-3:15 p.m.
Satire
James Thorson
This course will examine satirical literary texts from various period. We will begin with some classical satirists (Horace and Juvenal in translation), and then look at some of the great satirical texts from the renaissance and eighteenth Century (Utopia, Gulliver's Travels, Candide [also in translation]). We will conclude with some modern satiric novels. All of the texts will be studied in their social, religious, literary, and political contexts. A certain amount of background material will be brought to bear on the works, but the focus will be on the satirical texts themselves. Many of the themes of the earlier works remain as relevant today as they were in the period in which they were written (sexual politics, political chicanery, currying favor with the wealthy and powerful, etc.). The critical approaches used will include formal, new historical, feminist, rhetorical, and others that may come up by way of the examination of particular works. In other words, we will be eclectic.
The reading list will consist of the following works:
Horace: The Satires
Juvenal: The Satires
Thomas More: Utopia
Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels
Voltaire: Candide
George Orwell: 1984
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451
Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-5
Joseph Heller: Catch-22
David Lodge: Changing Places
Course requirements include: three relatively short (three to seven pages) critical papers for undergraduate students; one ambitious term paper for graduate students; and a midterm and final examination for all students taking the course for credit.

English 587.002/487.002
MWF 9:00-9:50 a.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.

English 587.003
W 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Theory of Fiction: The Lonely Voice
Greg Martin
Frank O'Connor writes in his critical study of the short story, The Lonely Voice, “In discussions of the modern novel we have often come to talk of it as the novel without a hero. In fact, the short story has never had a hero. What it has instead is a submerged population group—a bad phrase which I have had to use for want of better… Here it does not mean material squalor, though this is often characteristic of submerged population groups. Ultimately it seems to mean defeat inflicted by a society that offers no goals and no answers. The submerged population is not submerged entirely by material considerations; it can also be submerged by the absence of spiritual ones. Always… there is this sense of outlawed figures wandering about on the fringes of society…and…an intense awareness of human loneliness.”
This is a literature course designed for fiction writers, and the course readings, both novels and short stories, in some way relate to O'Connor's idea of the lonely voice. Each week, we will read either a novel or pair of short stories, and ask ourselves how this idea of the lonely voice shapes other craft considerations (structure, image, point of view, characterization, etc.) Readings include (among others): Frank O'Connor's “Guest of the Nation”; Howard Norman's The Bird Artist; Sherman Alexie's “What You Pawn I Will Redeem”; James Welch's Winter in the Blood; Willa Cather's My Antonia; Robert Olen Butler's Good Scent from a Strange Mountain; Dan Stolar's The Middle of the Night, Alice Munro's “Cortes Island”; Alistair Macleod's “The Boat”; Bernard Malamud's “The German Refugee”; Susan Sontag's “The Way We Live Now”; Pam Houston's “The Best Girlfriend You Never Had”; William Gass's “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country”; Jane Smiley's Ordinary Love & Good Will; Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio; and "Lady with the Dog" by Anton Chekhov.

The goal of the course is, at bottom, practical, to each week look at a story and ask the questions: How was this made? How does this story work? How does a growing understanding of these stories shape my own work? Finally, another goal of the course is, like O'Connor, to develop theories of our own sensibility.

Each student will lead a discussion on a novel or story. Two-three page critical responses will be required for each week's reading, and each student will write one longer critical response (approximately ten pages) on a story or novel of their choice. Creative work (a short story, a novel chapter), with an accompanying discussion of craft influence, may be substituted for the final paper.

English 595.001
M 7:00-9:30 p.m.
Master's Colloquium: Theorizing “Race”
Elizabeth Archuleta
It is easy to believe that "race" and discourses on "race" exist in the West only from the Enlightenment on or that pre-modern European culture is pre-racial, because its foundational discourse is based on religion and not biological-scientific taxonomic systems of bodily difference. Medievalists and classicists have preferred "ethnicity" as the descriptive category most appropriate to their period despite the evidence of trends that, today, would be identified as race-related. This colloquium will trace discourses on race, beginning with Icelandic sagas and moving through a broad range of texts from the colonial to the post-colonial periods, to ask ourselves what "racial thinking" is. This course will also use postcolonial theory as a tool for reading the literatures of “racialized” groups who, in spite of their differences, bear common distinctive markers as a result of their shared experience of colonialism. While these authors have absorbed the influences of imperial culture, their works demonstrate that they have also resisted its influence by asserting their differences. Finally, we will test contemporary definitions of “race” against earlier texts and documents to see how established theories of "race" might be revised, augmented, or replaced.

English 640.001
M 5:30-8:00 p.m.
Argumentation: A Seminar in Rhetoric and Composition Theory
Charles Paine
Argumentation is a hot topic. In popular public culture, pundits worry about the sad state of affairs, about the “decline in public discourse.” In academe, theorists explore how postmodernity has altered what counts as reasoning and how communities might establish authority and legitimacy. In the world of pedagogy, we've been talking about “critical thinking” for a long time and the past few years have seen a spate of argument textbooks (one of which we use in first-year English at UNM). We will begin the semester examining several arguments—some from Ancient Greece and Rome, some from jurisprudence, and some from contemporary popular debates (e.g., “who was the greatest hitter of all time?” “Will public-school vouchers work?” or others we collectively choose). We'll develop a class lexicon about argumentation before we start reading the theorists, which will include some Ancients, important 20th-century theorists of the “new rhetorics,” feminist and postmodern theorists, and contemporary pedagogical writers. You'll write several short analyses and brief position papers throughout the semester, and you'll finish with a brief project (not a term paper) on an issue you choose. This course will be helpful to those interested in rhetorical history (especially the 20th century), those who teach argument, and anyone who wants a deeper and fuller understanding of why and how we argue and why we should care about it.

English 650.001
T 4:00-7:30 p.m.
Political Prose and Poetry in late Anglo-Saxon England
Helen Damico
There is very little written in late ninth- and early eleventh-century England that does not reflect that nascent nation's social and political ideologies, so that one cannot fully understand the force of Old English literature divorced from its political context. It was a turbulent time of unspeakable horror; continuous Danish attacks lay waste the country, maimed the citizenry, and robbed the nation's coffers. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle details the wholesale destruction that led to fall of the Anglo-Saxons and the rise of the Anglo-Danes. Laws, sermons, homilies, and saints' lives exemplify the clash between politics and faith, and directly or indirectly address issues of political leadership and the moral mission of leaders not only to exemplify an ethical standard, but also to lead their citizenry in an educative process of social reform. The seminar will focus on three time periods: the Alfredian moment, characterized by a pause in Danish attacks (871-99), that articulated the foundation of nationhood based on language, space, education, and ethics; the Aethelredian debacle, noted for its ineffective financial settlements with the Danes, who programmatically continued their attacks as they pocketed the silver (980-1014); and the Cnutian conversion of Dane to Christian, of conqueror to protector (1017-1035). Some major texts: Selections from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (prose and the six poems), Wulfstan's Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, Aelfric's Esther, Judith, The Battle of Maldon, Selections from Alfred's translations--Gregory's Pastoral Care, Augustine's Soliloquies, Orosius's History of the Pagans; Selections from Beowulf. Students will choose a topic to be developed during the course of the seminar and on which a paper of publishable standard and length will be written.
Prerequisite: 449 (Introduction to Old English) or its equivalent. Reading competency in Old English is essential.

English 660.001
T 4:00-7:30 p.m.
Seminar: Modern American Novel
Antonio Márquez

" . . .we can clarify the social, cultural meanings of novels by examining them in the contexts from which they emerged as 'stories' worth telling, and that these contexts are broadly cultural rather than exclusively literary . . . . Conceived in this way, literary history becomes a cultural drama in which authors, texts, and nonliterary events enter into multivalent relationships with readers."
—David Minter, A Cultural History of the American Novel (1996)

This course in American literary history centers on the development of the modern novel. We will investigate the parameters of the American literary imagination and consider the traditions and shifting intellectual and cultural currents that shaped the modern novel. Focusing on texts and criticism, we will survey the cultural-literary context of representative novels ranging from modernism to post-modernism (1881-1973). Required readings will be supplemented by readings in the theory of the novel, genre criticism, and literary history.

Requirements: (1) seminar participation, (2) a midterm examination, (3) a final examination, and (4) a term paper and class presentation.

Required Texts: (1) James, The Portrait of a Lady (1881); Norris, McTeague (1899); Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920); Cather, The Professor's House (1925); Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night (1934); Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1936); West, The Day of the Locust (1939); Wright, Native Son (1940); O'Connor, Wise Blood (1952); Nabokov, Lolita (1958); Momaday, House Made of Dawn (1969); Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973).