English Department Course Descriptions F 2020
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ENGLISH DEPARTMENT COURSE DESCRIPTIONS F 2020 Core Area of Time Course Professor Understanding Description Offered or Major HEN 180 CE Webster WF 12:30- Creative Although we may not always be aware of it, the form or structure of an idea—the manner Introduction to 1:50 Expression Core, in which it is presented to us—matters just as much as its substance. Sometimes, form and Creative CW minor content work together harmoniously: sometimes, though, they seem to jar, as if message Writing and means are at odds. Students taking this course will engage with the “form/content” dynamic both as readers and as writers, doing so in the context of works composed in four “closed” poetic forms: couplets, quatrains, sonnets, and blank verse. While exploring and learning from the compositions of eminent English and British poets, from William Shakespeare to Don Paterson, class-members will produce four poems of their own, one in each of the poetic forms named above. This course offers a solid examination of composition techniques employed in the majority of poems written between the Renaissance and the early twentieth century; and students who have read and written poetry in the free verse form will find that this class involves development of quite different technical skills and disciplines. EN 220 WCH Martin MF 2:00-3:20 English major; This course explores the cultural heritage of Medieval England through the literature of the British WGS minor, period. We will discuss widely different aspects of the time such as aesthetics, political Literature: WCH, GWR issues, sex roles, and chivalric values. Alfred the Great, Cynewulf, William the Conqueror, Medieval- Chaucer, The Pearl Poet and other important figures helped shape 1,000 years of English Romance & literature, and we will consider ways that Medieval attitudes contributed to the culture of War later ages up through current times. EN 230 British Adams TH 9:30- English major; The twentieth century was marked by violence, upheavals, and the destruction of old Literature- 10:50 WGS minor, worlds: the first and second world wars, the revolutions in Russia and China, the end of the Modern: WCH, GWR British Empire . In this course we will examine the impact of such cataclysmic events on Literature - the literature and visual culture of Britain and the Empire. The first unit of the course deals World Wars, with responses to the world wars by soldier-poets, T. S. Eliot, Kazuo Ishiguro, and artists Diverse Voices and filmmakers. The second unit, “Growing Up in Britain and the Empire,” includes fractured fairytales by Angela Carter and short fiction by Indian-British and Pakistani-British writers. The course assignments include a short paper, a course paper, a midterm, and a final. ENGLISH DEPARTMENT COURSE DESCRIPTIONS F 2020 Core Area of Time Course Professor Understanding Description Offered or Major EN 240 Rohrkemper MW 9:30- English major; This course focuses on American literature of the first half of the nineteenth century, an American 10:50 WCH, GWR extraordinarily fertile period of American philosophical and social thought that saw the Literature – development for the first time of a distinctive American literature, but was also a period in The American which the country began to be torn apart by slavery and other issues that ultimately would Romantic lead us to Civil War. We will read such authors as Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Douglass, Revolution Melville, and Hawthorne. EN 281 Writing Waters TH 9:30- English major; Some say short fiction is dying- but is it dead? Most people don’t read short stories unless and Analyzing 10:50 Creative they have to, or have the genre thrust upon them by another person. Still, short stories can the Short Story Expression Core, be powerful, and convenient- they often pack a powerful punch, be it emotional, TH 11:00- CW Minor intellectual or psychological, and they’re economic in the sense that a short story can 12:20 (usually) be read in its entirety in one sitting. EN 281 is an introduction to the analysis and creation of short stories, and the classic components of what a short story is. Students will exploit concepts of literary criticism in order to discuss and write about short fiction, and will exercise their understanding of the elements of fiction to generate a variety of topic papers, including (but not limited to) a research paper and one original, new short story. Through these various approaches, students will increase their comfort level in working with the genre. EN 282 Moore WF 12:30- English Major, Students in this class will learn to write using the conventions of technical writing. They will Technical 1:50 CB SLE practice and prepare a writerly voice for the workplace. This project-based course will Writing guide students through the practices of job application writing, grant writing, proposals, project management, report writing, and usability studies. EN 283 Legal Telleen MW 9:30- English Major A survey of the types of writing common in government, politics and law. Students practice Writing 10:50 basic legal analysis, statistical analysis, persuasion and more advanced forms of legal writing, such as the appellate brief. ENGLISH DEPARTMENT COURSE DESCRIPTIONS F 2020 Core Area of Time Course Professor Understanding Description Offered or Major EN 288 CE Moore TH 2:00-3:20 Creative Writing Young Adult literature now presents a powerful force in today’s book publishing and Young Adult Minor, English marketing world. We will consider market forces that brought about this change, the Literature Major, CE core, themes and story patterns that make a YA novel successful, and how we can apply basic GWR literary theory to analyzing YA. The course will guide students through close reading and an appreciation of the writer’s craft (think character development, social themes, POV, and story structure). As a GWR course, YA Literature includes a focus on how to conduct research and how to write a compelling argument about a contemporary YA book of your own choosing. Students earn CE Core credit by developing their creative side. You will plan your own YA novel and, with the help of workshopping and peer feedback, write your own first chapter of this story. EN 302 The Martin MF 9:30- English Major This course considers the transformation of the English language from its formation in English 10:50 Anglo-Saxon England through modern times. Using cultural, political, historical, literary, Language and linguistic analyses, students will follow changes in vocabulary and syntax from Beowulf through Shakespeare and on to the many varieties of English spoken around the globe today. EN 306 Skillen MW 12:30- English Major, This course is a seminar on how to teach writing and language to students in both Methods 1:50 Education secondary and post-secondary settings. As the best writing teachers are writers too, the Seminar in concentration course is also designed to help future teachers develop a more extensive writing craft. Teaching Language and Composition EN 315 Webster WF 2:00-3:20 English Major This course examines seminal lyric poems written during the British Neoclassical, Pre- Eighteenth- (pre-1800 Romantic, and Romantic periods. Works explored include representative examples of Century British course) these eras’ most popular poetic forms (e.g., couplets, quatrains, and blank verse); and the Lyric Poetry poems cover a wide range of subjects and themes, including “Society,” love, death and remembrance, slavery, revolution, “the Sublime,” the imagination, and the nature of consciousness. Authors may include Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, James Thomson, Mary Wortley Montagu, Thomas Gray, William Cowper, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Charlotte Smith. ENGLISH DEPARTMENT COURSE DESCRIPTIONS F 2020 Core Area of Time Course Professor Understanding Description Offered or Major EN 430 British Adams TH 2:00-3:20 English major, The four novels will be Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Toni Authors: WGS minor, Morrison’s Sula, and Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body. We will focus on women’s Austen Alcott, author seminar, relationships (sometimes good, sometimes bad) with mothers, sisters, friends, Morrison, SR SLE lovers. Each novel will be paired with a feature film or a documentary about the Winterson – author. Some of the material will be sexually explicit. Some may be of LBGTQ interest. Book & Film EN 460/JA460 Bhattacharya W 6:30-9:15 English major This course will introduce students to Japanese literature from the classical period to the From Murasaki (free elective for modern, in a variety of genres, starting from the oral traditions of myth and poetry of to Murakami PW and ED, Kojiki and Manyoshu, the great masterpieces of classical Japanese prose depicted in the English elective Genji Monogatari, plays from the feudal period, Heike Monogatari and Sonezaki shinjuu, to for LIT) the early modern novels such as Kokoro, and contemporary fiction and personal histories that have gained critical acclaim and popular success such as Masks, Kitchen, A Personal Matter, Norwegian Wood among others. Students will not only understand the historical contexts of these works in terms of genre, intent, audience, themes, aesthetics, gender relations, religion and spirituality, but also engage with literary theories that undergird our understanding of literary production and appreciation. Students will also learn how to apply that understanding in their own writing in the form of research papers and reflective, reaction short papers. TH 240 Rohrkemper TH 12:30- CW Minor; The study of the tools and techniques of creative writing for the theatre. Students will Playwriting 1:50 English Major – develop scripts that may receive staged readings or short play festival productions. PW: creative genres, LIT: writing elective LAT 111 Besse MWF 2:00- Power of This course is designed to introduce students to Latin.