SUMMER
English 103: Workshop in
Advanced Writing
Professor Donald McCrary
This course will examine the rhetorical strategies and ideological content within creative and critical texts that represent provocative and insightful meditations on varied aspects of the human condition. For example, students will study critical and creative texts appropriated and generated by womanist theology, a radical hermeneutics that interrogates and resists multiple oppressions, including sexism, racism, and classism. By reading and analyzing challenging and thoughtful texts, students will explore not only how rhetoric is under-girded by specific ideologies, but also how writers construct and present rhetoric in ways that influence and persuade their readers. Some of the writers students will read include Alice Walker, Barbara Smith, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Delores Williams, Gloria Anzaldua, Richard Wright, Jane Tompkins, Gary Soto, Stephen Jay Gould, and Michiko Kakutani. Students will write several formal essays that ask them to reflect critically on fiction and non-fiction texts, as well as their own experience.
Professor Donald McCrary
This course will examine the rhetorical strategies and ideological content within creative and critical texts that represent provocative and insightful meditations on varied aspects of the human condition. For example, students will study critical and creative texts appropriated and generated by womanist theology, a radical hermeneutics that interrogates and resists multiple oppressions, including sexism, racism, and classism. By reading and analyzing challenging and thoughtful texts, students will explore not only how rhetoric is under-girded by specific ideologies, but also how writers construct and present rhetoric in ways that influence and persuade their readers. Some of the writers students will read include Alice Walker, Barbara Smith, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Delores Williams, Gloria Anzaldua, Richard Wright, Jane Tompkins, Gary Soto, Stephen Jay Gould, and Michiko Kakutani. Students will write several formal essays that ask them to reflect critically on fiction and non-fiction texts, as well as their own experience.
English 225:
Science
Fiction
Professor Wayne Berninger
see course website
Alien invasions and rocket ships! Runaway robots and malevolent computer programs! Clones and cyborgs! Virtual reality and mind control! Time travel and ecological disaster!
Professor Wayne Berninger
see course website
Alien invasions and rocket ships! Runaway robots and malevolent computer programs! Clones and cyborgs! Virtual reality and mind control! Time travel and ecological disaster!
For at least a century,
fiction writers have dealt with subjects such as these as they attempt to
answer the question of whether technology and scientific progress will save us
or destroy us. These writers have sought to complicate our understanding
of the modern world by creating fiction in which human beings struggle to cope
with the psychological, social, political, environmental, and spiritual
implications of scientific advancement.
Often dismissed as merely
a frivolous sub-genre of “serious literature,” science fiction has become
one of our culture’s most popular forms of literature (not to mention
film). It has become a popular pastime among science
fiction fans to catalogue examples of science fiction's predictive impact on
society, from the naming of the first NASA space shuttle after Star Trek's U.
S. S. Enterprise, to cyberpunk's anticipation of the advent of artificial intelligence
and the Internet.
Why is science fiction
so popular? What is its value? Why do so many readers think
science fiction is so important to an understanding of modern
culture? Given science fiction's increasing popularity and its
sometimes eerie, recursive influence on the culture at large, these are
important questions for literary scholars and cultural critics, not to mention
the general public, and it seems important for English majors to have at least
a working knowledge of this strange branch of modern literature.
In this course, we will
examine the historical and theoretical development of the genre of science
fiction, from its early precursors in the late nineteenth century to the
"space opera" of the 1920s and 1930s and the “Golden Age” of the late
1940s and 1950s, and from the “New Wave” of the 1960s and 1970s to the
“cyberpunk” of the modern day. Through class discussion of key terms
and concepts used in the critical discussion of science fiction, we will
develop an understanding of how it fits into the overall literary and
intellectual tradition of the West. We will investigate how science
fiction evolved in response to rapid technological and scientific advancement
(in both the hard and soft sciences) in Western culture, and how science
fiction therefore provides us with a unique lens through which to critique that
culture and to understand our lives in the modern world.
Readings will
include: E. E. "Doc" Smith's The Skylark of Space, Isaac
Asimov's Foundation, Philip K. Dick's Do Androids
Dream of Electric Sheep? and William Gibson's Neuromancer.
FALL
English 101:
Introduction to English Studies
Professor Michael Bennett
This course is designed to introduce English majors and minors to their chosen field, focusing on three main topics: the history of English studies, critical analysis of literature and culture, and career opportunities for students of the humanities. Readings and written work emphasize the diversity and scope of English studies and introduce students to contemporary debates concerning such issues as the connection between reading and writing, the relationship between different interpretive strategies, and the nature of the literary canon. We will study one canonized literary text—The Scarlet Letter—from a variety of critical perspectives. We will then apply these perspectives to the analysis of other literatures and a contemporary cultural phenomena—the development and dissemination of rap music. Outside speakers will occasionally address issues in the field and the range of career opportunities available to students who major in English. The course is designed to allow students to make informed choices about their programs of study and their careers.
Professor Michael Bennett
This course is designed to introduce English majors and minors to their chosen field, focusing on three main topics: the history of English studies, critical analysis of literature and culture, and career opportunities for students of the humanities. Readings and written work emphasize the diversity and scope of English studies and introduce students to contemporary debates concerning such issues as the connection between reading and writing, the relationship between different interpretive strategies, and the nature of the literary canon. We will study one canonized literary text—The Scarlet Letter—from a variety of critical perspectives. We will then apply these perspectives to the analysis of other literatures and a contemporary cultural phenomena—the development and dissemination of rap music. Outside speakers will occasionally address issues in the field and the range of career opportunities available to students who major in English. The course is designed to allow students to make informed choices about their programs of study and their careers.
English 103: Workshop in
Advanced Writing
Professor Donald McCrary
This course will examine the rhetorical strategies and ideological content within creative and critical texts that represent provocative and insightful meditations on varied aspects of the human condition. For example, students will study critical and creative texts appropriated and generated by womanist theology, a radical hermeneutics that interrogates and resists multiple oppressions, including sexism, racism, and classism. By reading and analyzing challenging and thoughtful texts, students will explore not only how rhetoric is under-girded by specific ideologies, but also how writers construct and present rhetoric in ways that influence and persuade their readers. Some of the writers students will read include Alice Walker, Barbara Smith, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Delores Williams, Gloria Anzaldua, Richard Wright, Jane Tompkins, Gary Soto, Stephen Jay Gould, and Michiko Kakutani. Students will write several formal essays that ask them to reflect critically on fiction and non-fiction texts, as well as their own experiences.
Professor Donald McCrary
This course will examine the rhetorical strategies and ideological content within creative and critical texts that represent provocative and insightful meditations on varied aspects of the human condition. For example, students will study critical and creative texts appropriated and generated by womanist theology, a radical hermeneutics that interrogates and resists multiple oppressions, including sexism, racism, and classism. By reading and analyzing challenging and thoughtful texts, students will explore not only how rhetoric is under-girded by specific ideologies, but also how writers construct and present rhetoric in ways that influence and persuade their readers. Some of the writers students will read include Alice Walker, Barbara Smith, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Delores Williams, Gloria Anzaldua, Richard Wright, Jane Tompkins, Gary Soto, Stephen Jay Gould, and Michiko Kakutani. Students will write several formal essays that ask them to reflect critically on fiction and non-fiction texts, as well as their own experiences.
English 104: Creative
Writing
Professor Lewis Warsh
Professor Lewis Warsh
The goal of the workshop
is to expand our ideas of “what is a poem” and “what is a work of
fiction.” Are poetry and fiction exclusive or related genres? Weekly
assignments will question the preconceived notions of form, content and gender,
with emphasis on the best ways of transcribing thought processes and
experiences into writing. Work by Marguerite Duras, Frank O’Hara, William
Carlos Williams, Lydia Davis, Andre Breton and others will be discussed in
class, and used as models, but much of the workshop time will be spent reading
and discussing our own writing. A final portfolio of work will be required.
English 128: British
Literature I
Professor Sealy Gilles
In this course, we will explore the first seven hundred years of literature written in the British Isles–from the monster tale of Beowulf to the tragedy of the African prince, Oroonoko. Major texts also include Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and a Shakespeare play. These selections range in genre from epic to romance, from comedy to tragedy. In these texts, and in shorter lyric poetry of the period, we will focus on the role of the stranger–the exile, the outsider, and the alien–in early British culture. How is strangeness defined? What kinds of demands does the stranger make upon the culture? What is the culture’s response to an alien presence? Students are expected to complete a research essay on a topic related to one of the assigned texts. In addition, there will be one short essay and a final examination.
Professor Sealy Gilles
In this course, we will explore the first seven hundred years of literature written in the British Isles–from the monster tale of Beowulf to the tragedy of the African prince, Oroonoko. Major texts also include Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and a Shakespeare play. These selections range in genre from epic to romance, from comedy to tragedy. In these texts, and in shorter lyric poetry of the period, we will focus on the role of the stranger–the exile, the outsider, and the alien–in early British culture. How is strangeness defined? What kinds of demands does the stranger make upon the culture? What is the culture’s response to an alien presence? Students are expected to complete a research essay on a topic related to one of the assigned texts. In addition, there will be one short essay and a final examination.
English 150: African
American Literature
Professor Louis Parascandola
This course will examine masterpieces of African American short fiction from early authors like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper to contemporaries such as Thomas Glave. In between, we will look at classics by writers including Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Alice Walker, Langston Hughes, and Jamaica Kincaid. Student grades will be based, in part, on oral presentations and a research paper on one of the authors studied in class. One or more of the authors discussed will give a reading from his or her work during class time.
Professor Louis Parascandola
This course will examine masterpieces of African American short fiction from early authors like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper to contemporaries such as Thomas Glave. In between, we will look at classics by writers including Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Alice Walker, Langston Hughes, and Jamaica Kincaid. Student grades will be based, in part, on oral presentations and a research paper on one of the authors studied in class. One or more of the authors discussed will give a reading from his or her work during class time.
English 158: Literature
of the United States I
Professor Amy Pratt
Even before land was sighted, the New World had captured the imagination of European men and women. This course will examine America as a literary phenomenon, that is, something that was created, in part, through the words written about it. We will explore the different and sometimes conflicting dreams and fantasies that men and women brought to America and trace what happened to them over two centuries. Through our examination of the metaphors associated with America and the kinds of literary forms used to tell stories about the New World, we will question how certain ways of making meaning influenced relationships between Europeans, African Americans and Native Americans, and whether they still shape our thinking about what America is, or should be, today.
Professor Amy Pratt
Even before land was sighted, the New World had captured the imagination of European men and women. This course will examine America as a literary phenomenon, that is, something that was created, in part, through the words written about it. We will explore the different and sometimes conflicting dreams and fantasies that men and women brought to America and trace what happened to them over two centuries. Through our examination of the metaphors associated with America and the kinds of literary forms used to tell stories about the New World, we will question how certain ways of making meaning influenced relationships between Europeans, African Americans and Native Americans, and whether they still shape our thinking about what America is, or should be, today.
English 187: The Bible as Literature
Professor William Burgos
The Bible is one of the fundamental texts of Western civilizations—a text that has deeply influenced how Westerners imagine the Divine and its relation to humankind. Yet it is also a text many people know little about: Who wrote it? How did it arrive at its present form? In addition to questions of authorship and canon formation, this course will focus on the art of biblical narrative (the distinctive ways of storytelling developed by biblical writers) and examine different approaches to translating biblical texts into English and how they affect the reader’s experience of the Bible. Readings will include selections from Hebrew Scripture (Genesis, Exodus, Job, Psalms, Songs of Songs, Isaiah) and Christian Scripture (The Gospels and The Book of Revelations).
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