Fall 2019 English and Journalism Course Descriptions
ENGL 101-2
Introduction to Creative Writing (AR)
TTh
8:00-9:15
Colleen Abel
Examines theory and practice of writing creatively. Reading combined with practice in
the basic processes of and strategies for writing fiction, poetry, or drama. Offered
annually.
Prerequisites: None.
ENGL 101-3
Introduction to Creative Writing (AR)
TTh
2:35-3:50
Kathleen Zurkowski
Compose an ode to your goldfish. Tell a story from the perspective of a liar. Improvise
a sketch comedy that might make grandma blush. Cut up words from a newspaper and rearrange
them into a poem. News flash: you don’t need a special gene to be creative. All you
need is to develop your sense of play. This course involves in-class games and exercises
that push us out of the ruts in our minds. Students will collaborate with each other
in class to generate material and evaluate new work. They will learn how to make their
initial efforts even better—more moving, more suspenseful, more hilarious—through
thoughtful revision. Finally, through careful reading, students will learn from the
experts, imitating the style of writers who keep them turning the pages at three a.m.
Prerequisites: None.
ENGL 101-4
Introduction to Creative Writing (AR)
TTh
10:50-12:05
Colleen Abel
Examines theory and practice of writing creatively. Reading combined with practice in
the basic processes of and strategies for writing fiction, poetry, or drama. Offered
annually.
Prerequisites: None.
ENGL 111-1
Latinx Fiction (
LIT, US DIVERSITY)
MWF
9:00-9:50
Kathleen O’Gorman
The Latinx literary renaissance, beginning in the 1980’s and continuing to this day,
has produced some of the most important recent and contemporary writing in the U.S.,
including that by Pulitzer Prize winners like Oscar Hijuelos and Junot Daz, and the
U.S. Poet Laureate 2015 – 2017, Juan Felipe Herrera. Readings will include fiction
by such writers as Hijuelos and Daz, Julia Alvarez, Sandra Cisneros, Cristina Henrquez,
Richard Rodrguez, Gloria Anzalda, Jaime Manrique, Ana Castillo, Oscar “Zeta” Acosta,
Cristina Garca, and Ernesto Quionez. We will study styles and structures of literary
texts and the ways in which they function in the service of narratives of American
life, with diverse cultural elements that contribute to the experience of Latinidad. Those elements may include the construction of identity in terms of race, class,
gender, and sexuality; bilingualism and code-switching; the experiences of the exile,
the immigrant, and the refugee; sense of place and displacement; the idea of home;
the marketing of the Latinx identity; power, borders, community, and the family.
Note: All of the texts are written in English, though some may include occasional
phrases and passages in Spanish.
Prerequisites: None.
ENGL 170-3
Jane Austen and Economics (LIT)
MWF 2:00-2:50
Pallabi Gupta
This course offers an interdisciplinary reading of Jane Austen’s novels by examining
the financial behavior of her characters and associating them with modern day economic
theories and concepts. The course studies how Austen’s early nineteenth-century understanding
of happiness and prudence matches present-day economist understanding of contentment
and rationality.
Prerequisites: None.
ENGL 201-1 Writing Fiction
(W)
TTh
9:25-10:40
Brandi Reissenweber
Workshop in reading and writing fiction. The course will focus on the principles
and techniques used by accomplished writers in their stories as well as on key elements
of the story form. Students will complete stories and develop a portfolio.
Prerequisites: Gateway Colloquium
.
ENGL 220-1 South Asian Studies: Text, Context, and Representation
(LIT)
MWF 3:00-3:50
Pallabi Gupta
Focusing on prominent contemporary writers and artists from Bangladesh, India, Nepal,
Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, this course offers an introduction to South Asian literature,
art, and culture. In addition to poetry and prose, the course also examines other
prominent artforms emerging from these regions, such as paintings, music, and theater.
Prerequisites: Gateway Colloquium
.
ENGL 243-1
Survey of English Poetry (LIT)
MWF
8:00-8:50
Joanne Diaz
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, English poets investigated women’s chastity,
scientific knowledge, the eros and violence of Greek and Roman mythology, and the
profound burden of sin and despair during the Protestant Reformation. In this course,
we will read poems by Thomas Wyatt, Philips Sidney, William Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth,
Mary Wroth, George Herbert, John Donne, and John Milton. We will consider the cultural
contexts of these poets in order to understand the preoccupations of the early modern
period. Offered occasionally.
Prerequisites: Gateway Colloquium.
ENGL 280-1
Understanding Literature (W)
TTh
2:35-3:50
Molly Robey
Understanding Literature is an introduction to literary study, designed for English
majors and minors. Because no single course can cover the wide range of interpretive
strategies employed in literary criticism today, much less survey its object of study,
Understanding Literature offers a systematic smorgasbord of approaches and genres,
designed to meet the following goals: to develop your vocabulary for talking about
literature and your strategies for interpreting it; to give you practice in reading
and writing about a variety of literary genres, in particular fiction, poetry, and
drama; to introduce you to the use of secondary sources; and to engage you in the
extended conversation of critical discourse.
Prerequisites: Gateway Colloquium
.
ENGL 301-1 Seminar in Creative Writing: Ideas of Poetry/Poetry of Ideas (AR)
MW 2:00-3:15
Michael Theune
The great Romantic poet William Blake writes, "I must create my own system or be enslaved
by another man's." In this class, we will explore many of the ways that systems—processes,
projects, and theoretical frameworks—have served the production of poetry in the past,
and we will experiment with the ways systems can inform and inspire the creation of
new poetry today. By semester's end, each class participant will devise a personal
system for poem-making and self-publish a short collection of the poems arising from
that system.
Prerequisites: ENGL 202 or consent of the instructor. This course may be waived by
the instructor based on evaluation of student’s portfolio. Priority enrollment given
to writing concentration when necessary.
ENGL 381-
Thinking Queer/Reading Queer (LIT, U)
MW
2:00-3:15
Molly Robey
This course introduces students to queer theory, a critical framework used to analyze
gender and sexuality, and it immerses students in the interpretation of literature
by gay, lesbian, queer, and trans-identified individuals as well as literature and
films that take as their subject queer genders and sexualities.
Pre-requisite: Gateway Colloquium and one of the following: ENGL 280, HEALTH 330,
PHIL 230, SOC 222, SOC 311, or WGS 101.
ENGL 335-1
Internship in Professional Writing
James Plath
An internship taken with an off-campus business or organization for which writing
is the intern’s primary responsibility. On-campus internship credit is also possible
if all-campus general requirements for an internship are met. Approval of the English
faculty internship supervisor is required. Offered each semester, May Term, and summers.
ENGL 352-1 American Lit. After 1865:
Realism, Naturalism, (Pre)Modernism
(LIT)
MF
11:00-12:15
Molly Robey
In the mid to late-nineteenth century United States, new technologies such as photography
and telegraphy emerged, helping to precipitate the development of the literary movements
of Realism and Naturalism. Realism represented a transformation in literary history,
a move away from depictions of ideal or romanticized people and settings toward unembellished
representations of the actual lived realities of the United States’ diverse peoples.
The literary history of Realism likewise converged with significant developments in
the physical and social sciences, including the discovery of evolution and the birth
of eugenics. Fusing scientific concepts of biological and social determinism with
Realism’s documentary impulse, Naturalism emerged as a subset of Realism concerned
with the individual’s struggle against physical and social forces. This course traces
this literary history from 1865 through the early twentieth-century emergence of literary
modernism, examining the intersections of aesthetic form and social forces.
Prerequisite: Gateway Colloquium; 1 course from 109-170 or 220–259, plus 280.
ENGL 363-1
Avant-Garde Fiction (LIT)
TTh
10:50-12:05
Kathleen O’Gorman
In this course we will study experimental fiction in the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries, with particular emphasis on concerns of style and structure. We will read
texts that call into question the limits of representation and of genre, even as they
make representational gestures within what seem to be standard genres (the short story
and the novel). We will examine whether these fictional experiments represent an escape
from the world or involve a different and perhaps more engaged response to it. We
will study texts by writers such as Maso and Danielewski (Americans), Calvino (Italian),
Beckett (Irish), Fuentes (Mexican), Cortzar (Argentinian), and Kundera (Czech), among
others.
Prerequisites: Gateway Colloquium; plus 1 course from ENGL 109-170 or ENGL 220-259;
plus 280. English 280 can be waived with the permission of the instructor.
ENGL 394-1
Death, Gender, Power (LIT)
TTh
8:00-9:15
Joanne Diaz
This course focuses on becoming familiar with Shakespeare’s comedies and histories,
dramatic forms that dominated his attention in the early part of his career. The course
will emphasize literary and dramatic strategies for reading the language, characters,
and genres of these plays, as well as critical strategies for interpreting the plays
within the cultural and historical context in which they originally functioned. In
addition, we will survey the ways in which actors, educators, and archivists investigate
the “meaning” of Shakespeare’s plays for our contemporary culture. Although we will
concern ourselves primarily with the printed texts of Shakespeare’s plays, we will
have to refer to actual productions, film adaptations, and staging possibilities as
we try to untangle critical issues and cultural assumptions. By the end of this semester,
I hope that you will feel more confident in your ability to interpret and write about
Shakespeare’s plays, and have a better sense of how you might help others engage with
the excitements of Shakespeare’s text.
Prerequisites: Gateway Colloquium and one of the following; ENGL 280, THEA 241, HIST
290, 321, or 323.
ENGL 401-1
Senior Writing Project (W)
W
7:00-9:30
Brandi Reissenweber
Creative Writing Senior Seminar: Capstone experience for English-Writing majors requires
thoughtful study of portfolio work and completion of an extensive, ambitious individual
project that’s both a logical extension of the student’s work and a new challenge.
The course will be multi-genre, with an emphasis on feedback and support.
Prerequisites: At least one ENGL 300-level writing course and senior standing, or
by permission of instructor.
ENGL 485-1
Directed Study-English
Brandi Reissenweber
Independent Study
ENGL 485-2
Directed Study-English
Michael Theune
Independent Study
FLM 110-1
Film Aesthetics (AR)
TTh 1:10-2:25
James Plath
Film is an art form, a cultural indicator, and a shaper of culture. The goal of this class
is to acquaint students with the aesthetics and language of film, en route to their developing an appreciation for the medium along with being able
to critically evaluate and write about films. Cinema is a huge field, and it is impossible to cover world cinema, or even every
aspect of American filmmaking. Nonetheless, this introductory course will attempt
to cover classic films, popular films, and indie films in order to give students a broad range of aesthetic tastes. The adult subject matter and profanity in several films we view may be offensive to some students, but that's the nature of cinema. Discussions
will also be frank. If that makes you uncomfortable, perhaps you should find a different
Gen Ed course.
Prerequisites: None.
JOUR 397-1
Internship in Editing & Publishing
James Plath
This internship provides students with an opportunity to gain work experience in positions
that emphasize editing, design, marketing, and other aspects of publishing and public
relations. Section editors and assistant section editors for The Argus can also apply
for this internship if the editor-in-chief is willing to serve as on-site supervisor.
Approval of the English faculty internship supervisor is required. Offered each semester,
May Term, and summers.