English Department | Majors,
Minors | Programs
Lower Division ENG | Upper
Division ENG | JOU | WRI
Fall, winter, spring. Prereq.: WRI-150 and junior standing. The study of modern forms of writing; course requires weekly writing assignments, totaling 50 to 60 pages of original work by the end of the term and develops lifetime writing skills. The course emphasizes writing as process and focuses extensively on revision.
Not offered 2004-2005. Prereq.: ENG-101, WRI-150 or permission. A survey of landmark poetry and prose from the Anglo-Saxon Era to the Enlightenment, with special emphasis on how the assumptions, concerns, and techniques of these texts came to be seen as the kernel of a coherent national literary tradition. This course does not fulfill the General Education Curriculum requirement in literature.
Fall or spring. Prereq.: ENG 101, or WRI 150 or permission. This course features a range of "literature," including transcribed Native American oral stories, colonial promotional tracts, sermons, speeches, captivity narratives, political pamphlets, personal letters, and slave narratives. The class will explore personal and cultural issues that concerned early Americans, and discuss how texts both define and complicate some of the terms associated with this period, including "Puritan," "Enlightenment," "Transcendental," "liberty," and even "American." This course does not fulfill the General Education Curriculum requirement in literature.
Fall or spring. Prereq.: ENG 101, WRI 150 or permission. In order to see the picture, one must step out of the frame. In this course, students will step out of their own cultural frames by studying how and why genres, politics, trade/war, religion (and also how we ourselves) construct global culture and identity. The texts will provide not only vicarious experiences of lands and cultures but will also reflect the dialogic nature of specific cultural and cross-cultural literary traditions. Possible traditions covered may include those of the Ancient Near East, the Ottoman Empire, the Subcontinent, Mogul and Persian poetry, Greco-Roman culture, North Africa, Native America, and the Caribbean-African-Asian heritage. (CULTURAL DIVERSITY)
Spring. Not offered 2004-2005. Prereq.: ENG 218 or permission. An opportunity for students to continue reading and writing poetry. Students are expected to demonstrate continued development as writers and to submit work for publication.
Spring. Prereq.: permission. A continuation of ENG 219, intended primarily for students who have already taken that course. Students are expected to show evidence of continuing development as writers and to submit their work for publication.
Spring. Prereq.: permission. A continuation of ENG 220 intended primarily for students who have already taken that course. Students are expected to show evidence of continuing development as natural history writers and to submit their work for publication.
Fall or spring. Prereq.: WRI 150 or permission. This course introduces the principal theoretical traditions that inform advanced literary study. Students will evaluate the major figures, schools, and concepts of literary theory and criticism through intensive reading and application. This course does not fulfill the General Education Curriculum requirement in literature.
Fall 2004. V.S. Naipaul and Salman Rushdie describe themselves as marooned men caught between imaginary homelands, and as such, Naipaul and Rushdie reside in between cultures, languages, and religions. In this course, we will vicariously travel with Naipaul and Rushdie as they navigate between the "real" worlds of Trinidad, East Africa, London, India, Pakistan, and New York, and the "imaginary" worlds of brutal colonization, partitions of countries, and the ghostly lyrics of "native" poetry. We will examine how these authors ultimately turn to writing as a way to record and to grapple with the cruelties of history. Possible books assigned: A Way in the World, Letters between Father and Son, The Enigma of Arrival, Shame, Midnight's Children, and The Moor's Last Sigh.
(Same as SOC-368) Winter. Not offered 2004-2005. Prereq.: permission. An opportunity to learn firsthand about prisons and prison life as students read prison-related texts in sociology and literature and as they write in response to what they read and what they see at local correctional institutions. Authors will include Jimmy Santiago Baca, Jerome Washington, Malcom X, and Agnes Smedley. (HUMANITIES and 3 CREDITS SOCIAL SCIENCES).
Fall 2004. This course will trace the evolution of Arthurian literature from its first flowering in 12th-century European court culture, to its influential gathering and retelling in Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, to its persistent presence in modern literature and culture. Along the way we’ll ask what Arthurian literature tells us about medieval conceptions of heroism, aspiration, hierarchy, and failure, and about why a cultural product so quintessentially “medieval” continues to fascinate modern writers. Authors may include Chretien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Thomas Malory, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Mark Twain, and Walker Percy.
Spring 2005. Alt. years. A study of the major figures in English literature from 1900 to the present. Authors may include Conrad, Shaw, Yeats, Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf, Eliot, Auden, Fowles, Lessing, and Amis.
Spring. Alt. years. Not taught in 2004. Prereq.: junior or senior standing. A study of the central concepts of linguistic theory. Includes the theoretical areas of pragmatics, semantics, syntax, morphology, and phonology; and the applied areas of language variation, first language acquisition, second language acquisition, written language, and the neurology of language. Students will acquire the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) as an essential tool for disciplined examination of linguistic phenomena. Issues of socio-linguistics will be addressed as students wrestle with the relationship between language, thought, and culture, and the nature of the cognitive and brain systems that relate to language learning, language teaching and language use.
Fall, winter, spring. Prereq.: permission. Research project on selected topics. See independent study guidelines. (INDEPENDENT WORK)
Spring. Prereq.: senior standing and completion of lower-division poetry, fiction, and/or nature writing course. A cross-genre course for Creative Writing majors, in which students will propose and work on independent projects. Creative writers will begin to approach writing and their works as professionals--i.e., thinking long-term beyond the classroom, and considering marketing their works (scouring journals and framing rejection letters!). In addition to writing intensively, students will help design the reading list, contextualize their works/writing styles within a literary tradition/genre, and create a community of writers. (INDEPENDENT WORK)
Fall, winter spring. Prereq.: permission. Individually arranged internship designed to provide practical editorial and writing experience. An extended analysis of the experience is required and periodic reports may be assigned. See internship guidelines. (INDEPENDENT WORK)
Spring. A capstone course for senior literature majors designed to help students move toward post-college study. Students will propose, research, write, and revise a senior thesis for formal presentation. In addition, students will research and compose an individualized reading list based on their interests and post-graduate plans. Lists may focus on American, British, or world literature, graduate record exam preparation, or literature ancillary to secondary education teaching. (INDEPENDENT WORK)