Africana-Studies Mentorship Program Event: Music Business Lecture

Shelly Clark will speak about the various aspects of being a musician:
  • How to survive in the industry.
  • The preparation needed to succeed.
  • The different avenues open to musicians.
When & Where
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
10-11 AM
Library Learning Center, Room 122

Jonathan Haynes: Sabbatical Activity

Professor Jonathan Haynes (English) is on sabbatical this academic year. In July, he attended a conference on the Nigerian film industry at Pan-African University in Lagos.  He gave one of the lead papers, called “Campus Films: A Nigerian film genre,” and was named to the Advisory Board of the Nollywood Studies Centre at PAU that was inaugurated during the conference.

He has been invited to speak on November 19 at a film festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil.  The festival, “Bem-Vindo a Nollywood,” will introduce Nigerian films to Brazilian audiences through the work of the director Tunde Kelani.

John High & Uche Nduka: Russian/American Poetry Symposium (& Open Reading)

Professor John High (MFA Program, English Department) & Uche Nduka (Creative Writing MFA student) will be part of a panel on Osip Mandelstam's poetry, as a part of the following event.

Russian/American Poetry Symposium
Saturday, 29 October 2011
Morton and Kidde Buildings
College of Arts and Letters
Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey
Stevens is quickly and easily reached by subway (the PATH is just one stop from Manhattan) and other forms public transportation. For directions, see: http://www.stevens.edu/sit/maps/public_transport.cfm.

Headquarters for the symposium will be on the third floor of the Morton Building on the northeast corner of 6th and River Streets (a short walk from both the subway and bus stops). The poetry reading will be in 228 Kidde, which is attached to the Morton Building.

The event is free and open to the public.

Panels and Round Tables
11am-  1pm
(1) Translation and publication of Russian poetry in English and English poetry in Russian (Chair: Andrey Gritsman) Among issues that may be discussed: Russian-American Poetry Translation and Exchange after Perestroika, anthologies, journals, change of scenery -- Approach to Translation: Nabokov vs. Wilson and Why We Translate at all? -- Bilingual Poetry, Is it Possiible. Presentation of the anthology Stranger at Home: American Poetry with an Accent.

(2) Current cultural affiliations (or lack thereof) within the former Soviet bloc and neighboring countries. (Chair: Murat Nemet-Nejat) (At present we have volunteers from Romania, Hungary, Slovenia, and Turkey. I would like to see a similar panel for US poetry.)

1pm - 2:00 pm - lunch

2pm - 4pm:

(1) Discussion of current translations of Osip Mandelstam. (Chair: John High)

(2) Russian/American translation/publication project (Chair: Vadim Mesyats). Discussion of translation projects to bring younger Russian Poets into English and younger American poets

4pm-5pm: coffee break
5pm - 7:30 pm: Poetry reading

7:30 dinner

John Killoran to Present on Search Engine Optimization

Professor John Killoran (English Department) has been invited to present his research on search engine optimization at the November 9, 2011, Applying Research in Practice conference sponsored by the Society for Technical Communication. 
What does search engine optimization have to do with English? The way a web page is written significantly influences how it ranks in a web search. Befitting the conference's focus on digital media, the day-long conference will take place entirely online. 
Details about John's presentation, and the whole conference, are at http://www.stc.org/education/online-education/virtual-conference

National Day on Writing


Please join us in celebrating the National Day on Writing!

Kick-off Thursday, October 20, 2011.

Contribute your writing to: LIU’s Voices at a Crossroads Gallery.

Reading: Thursday, November 3
6:00 pm
Avena Lounge

Sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)/

For more information, contact Deborah Mutnick at 718.488.1110 / deborah.mutnick@liu.edu
or Courtney Frederick at 718.488.1330 / courtney.frederick@liu.edu.

Graduate Courses--Spring 2012

Graduate Students: Make an appointment with Marilyn Boutwell ASAP to register for Spring 2012!

English 502 Writers on Writing (Class ID# 4866)
Professor John High
Mondays 6:30-8:50 pm

The course will offer readings and discussions with prominent fiction writers and poets as well as writers of creative non-fiction. The guest writers will meet with us weekly during the course of the semester to discuss and read from their work.  The purpose is to give us a chance to interact with and question a diverse range of writers about their techniques and ways of thinking as artists.  Students will be asked to reflect on and consider their own writing process: How do you think as a writer? How do these writers expand your ways of thinking and experimenting as a writer? The goal is to explore and learn—in this case, first-hand—from other writers and their books in order to better inform our sense of what it means to be a writer today.
In addition to reading at least one book by each visiting writer, students will create weekly writing texts in the form of imaginary letters, poems, or stories that dialogue with the work of each visiting author. These texts will contain questions and/or responses prepared before the writer visits and will then serve as take-off points for discussion with the author. In addition, each student will research the work of one writer and introduce her/him on the night of the reading. There will be additional writing experiments, which evolve from the ideas and ways of thinking of the visiting writers that emerge in our dialogues.
On days when there are no visitors we will read, discuss, and perform our own work. At the end of the semester, you will create a chapbook of your writings, which will include an imaginary introduction to your work written in the third person point of view and which reviews your own method of thinking as an artist.

The visiting writers for Spring 2012 are as follows:

Fanny Howe is the recipient of the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Presented annually by the Poetry Foundation to a living U.S. poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition, the Ruth Lilly Prize is one of the most prestigious awards given to American poets. In recent years she has received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Howe is the author of more than twenty books of poetry and prose, including Gone (University of California Press, 2003), Selected Poems (UC Press, 2000), On the Ground (Graywolf Press, 2004), and The Lyrics (Graywolf, 2007). She has also written novels, five of which have been collected in one volume called Radical Love. She has written two collections of essays, The Wedding Dress (UC Press, 2003) and The Winter Sun (Graywolf, 2009). She has lectured in creative writing at Tufts University, Emerson College, Columbia University, Yale University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her most recent collection is Come and See (Graywolf, 2011).

Francisco Goldman is the author of three novels: The Long Night of White Chickens, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award; The Ordinary Seaman, a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and The Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and The Divine Husband. Goldman is also the author of the non-fiction book, The Art of Political Murder: Who killed the Bishop?, which was named a Best Book of the Year by The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Economist. Goldman has been a contributing editor for Harper’s magazine, and his fiction, journalism and essays have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Esquire and The New York Times Magazine. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation grant and the T. R. Fyvel Freedom of Expression Book Award, and was a fellow at the American Academy of Berlin and the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. His most recent book is the acclaimed Say Her Name. He currently directs the Premio Aura Estrada/Aura Estrada Prize (www.premioauraestrada.com). Goldman divides his time between Brooklyn and Mexico City.

Vladimir  Druk was a founding member of the famous Club Poetry in Moscow during the waning days of the Soviet Union, along with Nina Iskrenko, Dmitri Prigov, Alexei Parshchikov, and Evgeny Bunimovich, among others. Druk is highly regarded for his experimental verse, echoing the work of Khlebnikov and the early Futurists of Russia, a vital poetry, which digs into the roots of language in an effort to untangle meaning beyond language. His collections include, The Switchboard, Disposable Birds, The Drawn Apple and The Second Apple. His poetry has been anthologized and published in Crossing Centuries: The New Russian Poetry, and Third Wave, among other anthologies, and literary journals. A former underground poet in the Soviet Union, he now lives in New Jersey.

Ruth Ozeki is an award winning novelist and filmmaker. Her most recent novel, All Over Creation, was a New York Times Notable Book and the recipient of a 2004 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, as well as the Willa Literary Award for Contemporary Fiction. Her first novel, My Year of Meats, was an international success, translated into eleven languages and published in fourteen countries, and winner of the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Award.  Born and raised in the US, she received a Japanese Ministry of Education Fellowship to do graduate work in classical Japanese literature at Nara University. During her years in Japan, she worked in Kyoto’s entertainment or “water” district as a bar hostess, studied flower arrangement as well as Noh drama and mask carving, founded a language school, and taught in the English Department at Kyoto Sangyo University.  Body of Correspondence (1994) won the New Visions Award at the San Francisco Film Festival and was aired on PBS. Halving the Bones (1995), an award-winning autobiographical film, tells the story of Ozeki’s journey as she brings her grandmother’s remains home from Japan. It has been screened at the Sundance Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art, among others.  Visit ruthozeki.com.

Marlon James was born in Kingston, Jamaica. His most recent novel, The Book Of Night Women was internationally acclaimed and voted Best Book Of 2009 by the Library Journal. His first novel, John Crow’s Devil, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Commonwealth Prize, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Currently a professor of literature and creative writing at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, he is at work on a new novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings. He divides his time between Jamaica, New York City and the Twin Cities. Visit marlon-james.blogspot.com/.
Zhang Er is the author of three collections of poetry in Chinese: Seen, Unseen (QingHai Publishing House of China, 1999), Water Words (New World Poetry Press, 2002) and Because of Mountain (Tonsan, Taipei, 2005). Her poems have also appeared in English translation in several poetry journals. Verses on Bird, Zhang Er's selected poems, were published in a bilingual, Chinese and English edition, by Zephyr Press in 2004. She worked as a contributing editor for several Chinese poetry journals, such as First Line, Poetry Currents and Oliver Tree. She is a co-editor of the Talisman Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Poetry. Zhang Er teaches at The Evergreen State College in Washington.
Norman Fischer has published fourteen books of essays and poetry; his most recent collections are Slowly but Dearly (Chax Press, 2004), I Was Blown Back (Singing Horse Press 2005) Charlotte’s Way (TinFish 2008), and Questions/Voices/Places/Seasons (Singing Horse Press 2009). Loosely associated with the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets of the seventies and eighties, he maintains close creative and personal relationships with many writers from that movement.  Fischer spent five years living at Tassajara Zen Monastery in monastic Buddhist practice where poets Jane Hirshfield and Phillip Whalen were fellow students.  He has been a Zen Buddhist priest for nearly 30 years, serving as abbot for the San Francisco Zen Center from 1995-2000.  He has taught at Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Stanford universities.  Visit normanfischerzenpoetry.com.

Joseph Donahue’s volumes of poetry are Before Creation, Monitions of the Approach, World Well Broken, Incidental Eclipse and Terra Lucida.  Of Incidental Eclipse John Ashbery has written, "This sequence confirms Donahue as one of the major American poets of this time." He lives in Durham, North Carolina and teaches at Duke University.

Kaylie Jones is the author of five novels, including A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, which was made into a Merchant-Ivory film starring Kris Kristofferson in 1998; Celeste Ascending, published by Harper Collins in 2001; and the memoir Lies My Mother Never Told Me, published to critical acclaim in 2009. She has been teaching creative writing for almost 25 years and chairs the annual James Jones First Novel Fellowship.  Visit kayliejones.com.
.
Simon Pettet's many books include his Selected Poems and More Winnowed Fragments, both published by Talisman. He edited The Selected Art Writings of James Schuyler and collaborated with Duncan Hannah on Abundant Treasures and with Rudy Burckhardt on Conversations About Everything and Talking Pictures. Of Pettet's most recent collection, Hearth, Alice Notley writes: "We dig the purity, dogged love, and artistic devotion of this rare personage."  British by birth, he lives in New York City.

English 523 Fiction Writing Workshop (Class ID# 5030)
Professor Martha Southgate (Visiting Writer)
Thursdays 6:30-8:50 pm

This course will explore reading and writing fiction through writing assignments, in-class workshop style  discussion of student work, and analysis of published works of fiction, as well as texts (such as Prose’s Reading like a Writer and Burroway’s Writing Fiction) that examine the techniques of fiction writing.  We will do in-class writing  on a regular basis and  and discuss the discipline it takes to keep one’s writing going once you’ve left the confines of the MFA program. In class workshops will focus on the process of re-writing and polishing the work. 

Martha Southgate is the author of four novels. Her newest, The Taste of Salt, was published in September 2011 to critical acclaim. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference.  Her July 2007 essay from the New York Times Book Review, “Writers Like Me” appears in the recent anthology Best African-American Essays 2009.  Previous non-fiction articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, O, Premiere, and Essence. She also has essays in the recent anthologies Behind the Bedroom Door and Heavy Rotation: Writers on the Albums That Changed Their Lives. Web: marthasouthgate.com.

English 524 Poetry Writing Workshop (Class ID# 4479)
See Sun, Think Shadow
Professor Lewis Warsh
Tuesdays 6:30-8:50 pm



CANCELLED

"See sun, think shadow" is a quote by Louis Zukofsky, a great poet of New York City, whose poetry attempted to capture the light and darkness of his immediate surroundings. "Sun" and "shadow" are states of mind and also emotional states—the external world of the sun (what we see) and the interior world lost in shadow (what we're feeling). One goal of poetry is to transcribe the shifts from one state to another and also recreate the experience of what it feels like to be in the sun and in the shadow simultaneously.

We will use this workshop to expand the range of what's possible as poets and will begin by exploring the traditions and the various forms of poetry (among them the sonnet, the sestina, the villanelle). One primary concern is the way that poetry changes through time (in the same way that painting and music changes) and how poetry reflects the time in which it is written. We will also discuss the notion of experimentation, and how writing is an act of risk-taking, i.e. without taking risks nothing ever changes. Is all great writing, for instance, experimental writing? In what ways is writing poetry similar to scientific discovery of invention? We will discuss, at length, what "experiment" means in relation to poetry. Among the poets we will look at closely are Louis Zukofsky, Charles Reznikoff, Ted Berrigan, Elizabeth Bishop, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Robert Creeley, James Schuyler, Eileen Myles, Bernadette Mayer, Amiri Baraka, Alice Notley, Jack Spicer, Frank O'Hara, Clark Coolidge and Allen Ginsberg. We will also explore the ways in which poetry connects to theory, touching on essays by Maurice Blanchot and Lyn Hejinian.

English 527 Topics in Professional Writing (Course ID# 5899)
Writing & Style
Professor Michael Bokor
Tuesdays 6:30-8:50 pm

You may be familiar with the rhetorical concept of “style” and even have your own “style” of writing. A writer cannot choose between using “style” and leaving it out of the discursive event. But what exactly is “style” and where does it come from? What is valued as “style”?
Focusing on the role of the English language in discursive practices, this course explores the cultural, theoretical, and practical perspectives of “style” to help you understand fully the relationship between language, culture, and personality and how these forces converge to define and shape the writer’s style.

Some of the pertinent questions to consider include:

i.              Is style “innocent” or is it the reflection of the personality, taste, and experience of the writer of the text or the culture of the writer’s society? Is it true that style is the writer in disguise?
ii.            Does style exist on its own, independent of the writer? Before the work, in the work, or outside it?
iii.           What shapes style? Is it the writer’s purpose and attitude to the audience?

Through various assignments, you will interrogate the functions of style and learn the numerous ways in which writers adapt their expressions (texts) to their purposes. By the end of the semester, you should:

  • Develop a high degree of clarity, fluency, and appropriateness in your writing;
  • Learn how to appreciate style within the context of genre-specific discourses; and
  • Use knowledge on style to improve your own writing.
This course is particularly good for students seeking opportunities to improve their rhetorical skills for effective academic, creative, and professional writing.

English 528 Seminar in Creative Writing (Course ID# 6314)
Resurrecting Bolaño: A Cross-Genre Writing Workshop
Professor Jessica Hagedorn
Wednesdays 6:30-8:50 pm

We will investigate the works of the late, great Chilean author Roberto Bolaño as inspiration for writing our own poems, stories, and maybe even scenes for a film or a play. Bolaño, who died in 2003 at the young and tender age of fifty, was a prolific author. Readings will include the gritty, sexy and sublime poems of Bolaño’s Romantic Dogs, as well as selections from his astonishing fiction: Last Evenings On Earth, Distant Star and the epic and terrifying 2666. We will screen a film which provides historical context for Roberto Bolaño’s life and times, and discuss cultural myth-making and what it means to read literature in translation. For MFA students only. Space limited.

English 532 Topics in Theory (Course ID# 6313)
Professor Deborah Mutnick
Theories of Space, Place, and Time
Mondays 6:30-8:50 pm



CANCELLED

Literary and rhetorical theories of space, place, and time provide powerful lenses for understanding texts and the contexts in which they are situated and, perhaps more important, the impact of social, economic, and political policies and practices on the collective home we call Earth. In 2007, PMLA published a special issue on cities in which guest editor Patricia Yaeger calls for a “new metropoetics.” We will theorize about what such a poetics might mean as we read literary and rhetorical theorists along with geographers, sociologists, artists, and architects in a multidisciplinary approach to parsing the literal and metaphorical multidimensional worlds in which we live. That is, rather than approach “space” or “time” as natural, given phenomena, we will study how they have been constructed by the dialectic of the human imagination in response to the material world.  Course texts will be selected from among many possible theorists and writers including: Marx and Engels, Mikhail Bakhtin, Jurgen Habermas, Nancy Fraser, David Harvey, Gloria Anzaldua, Jamaica Kincaid, Rebecca Solnit, Anthony Vidler, Sylvia Molloy, Mike Davis, Paul Gilroy, Benedict Anderson, Nedra Reynolds, and Dolores Hayden.

English 624 Seminar in American Literature (Course ID# 5897)
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
Professor Patrick Horrigan
Tuesdays 4:00-6:20 pm

An in-depth study of the two major American poets of the 19th century and their ongoing impact on American literature.  Using Ralph Waldo Emerson’s prophetic essay “The Poet” (1844) as a theoretical touchstone, we’ll start by looking at some examples of earlier American poetry, then read major works by Whitman, including the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass and Preface, the Calamus poems, and Civil War poems.  During the second half of the semester we’ll read most of Dickinson’s lyrics plus a selection of her letters.  Throughout the course, we’ll trace Whitman’s and Dickinson’s influence on modern poets such as Federico Garcia Lorca, Allen Ginsberg, Mary Oliver, Hart Crane, Marianne Moore, and Wallace Stevens.  Students will have the opportunity to write both critically and creatively in response to these writers.

English 649 Seminar in British Literature (Course ID# 5900)
The Mythology of Ireland
Professor Maria McGarrity
Wednesdays 6:30-8:50 pm



CANCELLED

This course will examine the central story of the main cycle of ancient Irish mythology: The Tain of the Ulster cycle. We will investigate the pre-history of Ireland, real and imagined, actual and mythic as well as study the development of the Celts in Ireland before the Viking invasions.  The transmission of pre-Christian, Celtic tales shaped the Irish literary and historical imagination for centuries and powerfully affected the Irish Literary Renaissance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  We will examine modern and contemporary imaginative works of W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, J. M. Synge, Eavan Boland, Seamus Heaney, and James Joyce to discern how the Irish past so shaped the conception of the nation at home and abroad.
Students will be invited to reimagine an Irish myth in poetry, drama, or fiction for the first, short paper, should they wish to do so in lieu of a traditional paper.

Texts:

Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Norton Critical, 0393926796
Kinsella, trans., The Tain, Oxford UP, 0192803735
Heaney, Opened Ground, Farrar Straus Giroux, 0374526788
Boland, New Collected Poems, Norton, 0393337308
Yeats, James Pethica, ed, Yeats's Poetry, Drama, and Prose, Norton Critical, 0393974979
Harrington, ed., Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama, 0393932430

English 700 Practicum in the Teaching of Composition (Course ID# 4232)
Professor Thomas Peele
Wednesdays 4:00-6:20 pm

Although the course will examine theoretical and practical implications of the teaching of writing, specifically, the course will prepare students to teach in the LIU/Brooklyn Writing Program. This is an important distinction because our readings and course discussions/exercises will serve to illuminate the theories and practices of teaching writing at LIU. However, the course should provide students with information and expertise to teach writing at other colleges or universities. The course will examine important teaching issues such as constructing course syllabi, integrating reading and writing assignments, promoting process writing, responding to student papers, contemplating the linguistic needs and abilities of a multicultural student population, and managing student behavior in the classroom.

Each student will create an English 16 syllabus that adheres to the program requirements. Moreover, each student will teach a fifty minute English 16 lesson plan and facilitate the class discussion of one course text. English 16 is a thematic course. Students can choose to teach a theme of either work or food. Once students have selected a theme, they must purchase a primary text of their own choosing, the program-mandated anthology of their chosen theme, Teaching Composition, and A Writer’s Reference.

English 707 Methods of Research and Criticism (Course ID# 4296)
Professor Lewis Warsh
Thursdays 4:00-6:20 pm

Let's begin with Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud—two 19th Century French poets. Baudelaire and Rimbaud were two of the main precursors to everything that happened in Western poetry in the 20th century. We're going to use our theoretical readings to look at their poetry and its reception, as well as all the strands that developed out of their work. Alongside these poets, we're going to read Walter Benjamin's study of Baudelaire, The Writer of Modern Life, and other essays by Benjamin, as well as many short essays by numerous poets and theorists. We're going to start off with Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents, and look closely at The Field of Cultural Production by Pierre Bourdieu, The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt, and The Shape of Time by George Kubler.

I want to test these two methods of research: the direct, more generic approach, where we go head on at something, and find out everything about our subject; and the indirect approach, where everything unrelated to the subject has the potential to count for something, The indirect approach is tricky, but it's also the way most rewarding. It allows you to put your individual stamp on a work of research.  As a way of doing this, we're going to study the ways of making connections between different branches of knowledge--literature, painting, music, film, especially--and look for relationships that didn't exist before. The field is endless. Let's try to do as much as we can, and build something we can use for the future.

Voices of the Rainbow Event: Heidi Durrow & Dahlma Llanos Figueroa

Please join us for a reading by Heidi Durrow and Dahlma Llanos Figueroa.


When & Where
Thursday October 13, 2011, 12 noon
Library Learning Center Room 124



Heidi Durrow, of African American and Danish Ancestry, is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel, The Girl Who Fell From The Sky, which won numerous awards including the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change.



Dahlma Llanos Figueroa was born in Puerto Rico and raised in New York City. She is author of the historical novel Daughters of the Stone, a finalist for the PEN/Robert Bigham Fellowship.


Contact Professor Maria McGarrity or Professor Louis Parascandola for further information: 718-488-1050.



English Professors Part of Teaching Narratives Conference

Mark your calendar and plan to join us for the first annual Brooklyn Campus Teaching Narratives Conference.

Professor Deborah Mutnick
(English) is one of the conference organizers, and several members of the English Department faculty will be presenting.


When & Where

Friday, October 14, 2011
8:30 am - 5:45 pm
Pratt Building, Rooms 120 & 121
Program to follow. For now, the flyer...


Undergraduate Courses--Spring 2012

English Majors: Please plan to register as early as possible. If we have to cancel courses for under-enrollment, then you have to scramble to find replacement courses at the last minute.  Every semester before you register—schedule an appointment with Wayne Berninger.

Non-English Majors: The skills that students gain in English classes are very useful in a variety of professional careers.  Any student may take these courses as general electives.  If you really want to build up your transcript, consider an English Minor (i.e., any four English courses numbered 100 or above).  Note:  The English minor will satisfy your Distribution Requirement, no matter what your major!   If you’d like more information about minoring in English—or if you think you might like to major in English— schedule an appointment with Wayne Berninger.




English 119 World Masterpieces (Class ID# 5896)
Myth In Literature And History: The Story of Troy from Ancient Times to the Present
Professor Sealy Gilles
Tuesdays & Thursdays 4:30-5:45 pm

This course will satisfy an English elective requirement in the Literature concentration. It can also satisfy a literature requirement in the Creative Writing concentration or in the Writing & Rhetoric concentration.


Mythological texts are often read as encyclopedia items – one story after another, with a bewildering array of characters displaying a seemingly endless stream of attributes and special powers. This course attempts to move beyond the lists in order to put polytheistic deities and the humans who suffer from their meddling in literary and historical context.

The core story. When Paris, prince of Troy, and Helen, wife to the Spartan king Menelaus, elope in the third millennium B.C.E., their passion triggers titanic struggles between a coalition of Greek states and the Trojan dynasty of King Priam. However, the conflict is not restricted to the mortal realm. The gods descend from Mount Olympus and plunge into the fray – meddling both on the battlefield and in the bedroom. The Trojan War and its long aftermath provide us with a capacious lens for understanding ancient Mediterranean cultures and our own conflicted world.

The texts. We will follow the Troy story from ancient to modern times. Classical readings include selections from Homer’s Iliad, The Oresteia by Aeschylus, and Virgil’s Aeneid. We will also be working with the story of Trojan lovers in Chaucer and Shakespeare, and, finally, the representations of Helen in contemporary poetry.

Requirements. In addition to reading responses, students will develop research projects that explore the impact of myth in the ancient world and in our own era. Interdisciplinary work is encouraged and I look forward to papers on topics such as the impact of myth on psychology, archaeological discoveries and the Troy story, gender and myth, Troy in the movies, and the literary afterlife of mythological texts.
Questions? Write Professor Gilles at sealy.gilles@liu.edu.

English 126 News Writing (Class ID# 4867)--cross-listed with JOU 119 (Class ID# 4089)
Professor Donald Bird (Journalism Department)
Tuesdays & Thursdays 1:30-2:45 pm

For English majors, this course will satisfy a writing-and-rhetoric elective requirement in the Writing & Rhetoric concentration.  It can also satisfy an English elective requirement in the Literature concentration. Students in either of the preceding categories who wish this course to count toward their English-major requirements should be sure to register for ENG 126—not JOU 119.  For English majors concentrating in Creative Writing, this course will count as a general elective.

Contact the Journalism Department for information about this course.

English 129 Later British Literatures (Class ID# 4430)
Text and Context in Modern British Literature
Professor Bernard Schweizer
Mondays & Wednesdays 3:00-4:15 pm

For English majors, this course is required in the Literature concentration.  It can also satisfy a literature requirement in the Creative Writing concentration or in the Writing & Rhetoric concentration.

The assigned texts for this course—all of them masterpieces of modern British Literature—will be read in a rich web of contextual references and sources. This interplay of text and context will give rise to a better understanding of both the literary work itself and of the varied social, political, cultural, scientific, and literary contexts that surround the text. Dickens’s Hard Times will be placed in connection with contemporary treatments of industrialization and poverty, both in creative and non-fiction writing. Stevenson’s classic The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde will be read in connection with Victorian ideas about psychology and crime. H.G. Wells’s tale The Island of Doctor Moreau will gain by juxtaposition with contemporary texts about Darwinian thought and fears of social degeneration. Rebecca West’s World War I novel The Return of the Soldier will be enriched by multiple textual and visual sources of the time, including World War I poetry, essays by Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence, and paintings, posters, and photos from the period. Finally, Doris Lessing’s two short novels A Home for the Highland Cattle and The Antheap will become more meaningful by comparison to stories written by African women and by looking at documents on race relations and urban conditions in Southern Rhodesia. Each of the assigned books will be a Broadview contextual edition.

English 159 Literatures of the U.S. Since 1865 (Class ID# 4084)
Ghost Stories
Professor Carol Allen
Tuesdays & Thursdays 3:00-4:15 pm

For English majors, this course is required in the Literature concentration.  It can also satisfy a literature requirement in the Creative Writing concentration or in the Writing & Rhetoric concentration.

This course covers American literature from the nineteenth century to the present with a focus on American ghost stories from a variety of writers in a number of different genres. Some of these texts are traditional tales about the visitation of spirits on the living, and others more loosely fit under the topic as the “entity” may be desire or a lost wish. We begin with a discussion of the conventions found in this tradition then move on to works about nineteenth-century America, even though some of these readings may have been composed more recently. From there, we arrive in the early twentieth century and finish with contemporary pieces. Paying close attention to the setting, mood, message, and relevant literary and cultural criticism, we will decipher these texts to arrive at interesting and unique interpretations.  Be prepared for a variety of assignments that will include informal writing, presentations, in-class essays, research, and a final essay with proposal. You will learn about the major movements in American literary development from the Civil War to present, hone your critical reading skills, concentrate on close reading and building an interpretation from that concentrated textual study, practice research, writing and revision, and perfect your article-building skills. Think of this course as practice in composing a publishable piece.

Required Texts:

  1. The Conjure Woman, Charles Chestnutt
  2. Beloved, Toni Morrison
  3. Desire Under the Elms, Eugene O’Neill
  4. Love, Toni Morrison
  5. Criticism and Handouts
English 166 Fiction Writing Workshop (Class ID# 4149)
Writers Studio—A Fiction Writing Workshop
Professor John High
Wednesdays 6:00-8:30 pm

For English majors, this course will satisfy a creative-writing elective in the Creative Writing concentration.  It can also satisfy an English elective requirement in the Literature concentration.  English majors concentrating in Creative Writing  may take this class two times for credit.

This workshop will function as a Writers Studio in which we meet each other face to face in our stories and focus on the way autobiography and dreams overlap with story writing and how the past is fictionalized as a way of giving it a voice. The premise is that the source of most fiction is memories and dreams. We’ll look at writers of the last century as well as contemporary writers who often blur the borders between fiction, dream and life story. We may even film our stories in reading, and enact them in theatrical performances. We'll concentrate on the various traditions of narrative, including plot, character, and conflict--with an eye towards expanding on what's already been done. There will be weekly creative writing exercises and group discussions, as well as commentary on the writing process and how to make it come alive for you. With one another we’ll read and help one another with our stories and how we can revise them. We’ll also give presentations or performances of the work as we go along. The course offers relaxed, though thorough and individualized investigation of the participants' work in relation to craft, theme and content of writing. Our writing project will include working with dreams, secrets, memories, observations, opinions, overheard conversations and random fragments of language. The goal of the course includes completing a chapbook and/or anthology of our work. You will also have the opportunity to explore and write about the larger community of NYC with the attendance of a literary reading or a visit to one of our great museums or theatres.

English 168 Creative Nonfiction Workshop (Class ID# 5895)
Professor Harriet Malinowitz
Mondays 6-8:30 pm

This course will satisfy a requirement in either the Writing & Rhetoric concentration or the Creative Writing concentration. It can also satisfy an ENG elective requirement in the Literature concentration. English majors concentrating in Writing & Rhetoric or in Creative Writing may take this class twice for credit.

English 168 is an intensive workshop devoted to writing “literary” essays.  We will read essays about writing essays and examine published “literary” essays for critical observation and analysis.  However, the core of the course will consist of the class’s reading and discussion of student work.  Some of the genres we will explore may include autobiography; the personal essay; the biographical portrait or profile; social observation; cultural criticism; and others upon suggestion.  Each student will write three short (3-5 page) pieces, and revise and expand one of them in a final longer piece of 10-20 pages. 

English 175 Writing for the Professions (Class ID# 4865)
Professor John Killoran
Thursdays 6:00-8:30 pm

For English majors, this course will satisfy a writing-and-rhetoric elective in the Writing & Rhetoric concentration.  It can also satisfy an English elective requirement in the Literature concentration. English majors concentrating in Writing & Rhetoric may take this class two times for credit.

This is a writing course for students in any field preparing for their careers.
When you are given your first writing project on the job, will you know what to do? Writing for the Professions is an elective for students across the disciplines as well as in English who are looking ahead to prepare themselves to write for their careers in business, law, the health professions, science, technology, education, and the arts.
Students will learn to orient their writing toward different audiences, such as managers, customers, clients, and professional colleagues. Students will also learn to write in ways that result in action. By the end of the semester, students will have written their resume and other career-related documents, and will be more confident in their abilities to write effectively.

English 190: Senior Seminar in Literature (Class ID# 3965)
Instructor TBA
Tuesdays 6:00-8:30 pm



This course is required for English majors concentrating in Literature. If you register for this course, and it cancels due to low enrollment, consult one of the Co-chairs of the English Department (either Professor Leah Dilworth or Professor Patricia Stephens) or the Undergraduate Registration Advisor (Wayne Berninger). If you need it for May graduation, we can arrange for you to take it as a Tutorial. Otherwise, we may ask you to wait until the next time it’s offered.


English 191: Senior Seminar in Creative Writing (Class ID# 4347)
Instructor / Day / Time TBA



This course is required for English majors concentrating in Creative Writing. If you register for this course, and it cancels due to low enrollment, consult one of the Co-chairs of the English Department (either Professor Leah Dilworth or Professor Patricia Stephens) or the Undergraduate Registration Advisor (Wayne Berninger). If you need it for May graduation, we can arrange for you to take it as a Tutorial. Otherwise, we may ask you to wait until the next time it’s offered.

English 192: Senior Seminar In Writing & Rhetoric (Class ID# 4088)
Instructor / Day / Time TBA



This course is required for English majors concentrating in Writing & Rhetoric. If you register for this course, and it cancels due to low enrollment, consult one of the Co-chairs of the English Department (either Professor Leah Dilworth or Professor Patricia Stephens) or the Undergraduate Registration Advisor (Wayne Berninger). If you need it for May graduation, we can arrange for you to take it as a Tutorial. Otherwise, we may ask you to wait until the next time it’s offered.


ALSO…FOR ENGLISH MAJORS (& MINORS)
IN THE HONORS PROGRAM—

HHE 174 Classics in Performance (Class ID# 6073)
Professor Sealy Gilles
Wednesdays 6-8:30 pm

For English majors, this course may be used to satisfy an English elective requirement in the Literature concentration, or a literature requirement in the Creative Writing concentration, or a literature requirement in the Writing & Rhetoric concentration.  Non-English majors can apply this course toward a minor in English. Please discuss your plan with Wayne Berninger in the English Department before you register.

HSM 110 Brooklyn Campus Town Hall: Dialogue for Social Change (Class ID# TBA)
Professor Deborah Mutnick
Thursdays 3-5:30 pm

For English majors, this course may be used to satisfy an English elective requirement in the Literature concentration, or a literature requirement in the Creative Writing concentration, a writing-and-rhetoric workshop requirement in the Writing & Rhetoric concentration, or a literature requirement in the Writing & Rhetoric concentration.  Non-English majors can apply this course toward a minor in English. Please discuss your plan with Wayne Berninger in the English Department before you register.


STUDY ABROAD AND EARN CREDIT THAT CAN BE APPLIED TOWARD YOUR MAJOR

The Global College Program of Long Island University invites English majors to study abroad for a semester or a year at one of our centers—Costa Rica, Japan, China, or India. Not only will you have the opportunity to study and travel in a foreign country while earning credit towards your major, but you will also become immersed in another culture, develop your global awareness and cross-cultural communication skills, and be provided with a variety of internship and service learning opportunities. At all centers, students are encouraged to engage in independent-study projects relevant to their academic interests.  

The Costa Rica Program in Heredia offers home stays with Costa Rican families, internships throughout the region, and courses in writing, Latin American studies, cross-cultural research methods, Latin American literature, Spanish language, global health and traditional healing, peace and reconciliation studies, environmental studies, and an introduction to experiential education.

The India Program in Bangalore enables students to explore the country’s religious and cultural diversity, the caste system, travel writing, environmental issues, the situation of Tibetan refugees, and the status of women. Students also have the opportunity to study India’s art forms, dance, and music.

The China Program in Hangzhou allows students to study a wide range of topics including the history of China, religious life in China, traditional Chinese medicine, poetry, women’s issues, calligraphy, taiji, Mandarin Chinese language and modernization and economic development. 

The Comparative Religion and Culture Program enables students to engage in intensive study of the teachings, rituals, and spiritual practices of the world’s major religions while exploring cross-cultural issues such as identity, human rights, peace and reconciliation, and world citizenship. During the fall semester, students travel in Taiwan and Thailand, and during the spring semester, students travel throughout India and Turkey while they immerse themselves in the religions and cultures of these countries. The courses offered in the fall include: Comparison: Theory and Method, Religions and Modernity in Taiwan, Culture and Society of Taiwan, and Religions and Modernity in Thailand. The following courses are offered in the spring: Comparison: Practice and Critique, Religions and Modernity in India, History and Society in India, and Religions and Modernity in Turkey.

The Australia Program in Byron Bay is offered only during the spring semester. Students explore the relationships between people and their environment from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Students travel throughout Australia and take courses that focus on indigenous peoples, the natural history, ecological diversity and related social and cultural contexts of Australia through seminars, field trips, service learning and internships.

Long Island University Financial Aid can be applied to all Global College overseas programs. For more information call 718 488 3409 or e-mail globalcollege@liu.edu.

A number of $5000 scholarships may be available to study in Global College programs.

English Majors who are interested in Global College should see the next page for the English Department’s Guidelines for English Majors Studying Abroad in the Global College Program—please do not register for Global College without meeting with Wayne Berninger first! 



ENGLISH DEPARTMENT GUIDELINES FOR ENGLISH MAJORS STUDYING ABROAD  IN THE GLOBAL COLLEGE PROGRAM


The following are guidelines for undergraduate English majors who wish to study abroad through the Global College Program and apply the credits earned toward their upper-division English major requirements.

Student must receive permission from Undergraduate Registration Advisor (Wayne Berninger) and Chair of English to enroll in Global College. See Wayne Berninger FIRST, before you do anything else.

Before going abroad, student must have completed ENG 16, COS 50, and six credits from ENG 61-62-63-64.

A maximum of 12 Global College credits may be applied toward upper-division English major requirements.

During any semester abroad, student must take 6 credits (or equivalent) in English.  Independent study may be arranged, in consultation with Undergraduate Advisor and Chair of English.

Notes

Tuition, fees, and room & board abroad is about the same as tuition, fees, and room & board at the Brooklyn Campus.

University financial aid and scholarships are transferable to Global College.  However, students should be aware that there are no work-study opportunities abroad.  Also, athletes who receive free room and board at the Brooklyn Campus are not automatically eligible for same while abroad.  Department of Athletics may agree to provide athletes with a stipend to cover Global College room & board fees.  Students are urged to discuss this possibility with the Department of Athletics before they decide to study abroad.

Global College has additional sources of scholarships for students studying abroad.

Stephanie Gray (MFA alum) To Show Films at Angel Orensanz Foundation, Gallery Space


The Film-Makers’ Cooperative and Angel Orensanz Foundation, Inc. present the monthly film series Lower East Side On The Screen – Evolving Urban Identity curated by MM Serra.

Lower East Side On The Screen – Evolving Urban Identity intends to showcase independent, underground films that touch upon the subject of the urban fabric of the Lower East Side and the Downtown counter-culture scene.
 
This month is a two-part program showcasing the work of artists Coleen Fitzgibbon and Stephanie Gray.

Monday, October 3, 2011
7:30 PM
Angel Orensanz Foundation, Gallery Space
172 Norfolk Street, New York, NY 10002
$ 8.00 (cash only)

Q&A with both film directors will follow the screening.

COLEEN FITZGIBBON
 L.E.S| 1976/2011 |  USA | 16:22 min. | digital, color, sound
 A fable about a parallel Manhattan and its mammon-worshiping inhabitants.
 Ludlow |1980 | USA | 7min. | video, sound
 LM Ludlow | 2011| USA | 5 min.
 + other short films

STEPHANIE GRAY
Storefronts Before Other Storefronts | 2008 | USA | 9 min. | color, Super 8
 Gertel’s galore lore ore | 2007 | USA | 7 min. | b/w, Super 8
 Hearts in New York | 2006 | USA | 3 min. | color, Super 8
 Next to last day of Five Roses Pizza | 2009 | USA | 7 min. | color, Super 8