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Course Descriptions
ENCR - Creative Writing | ENEX - Expository Writing |
ENLT - Literature | ENT - English Teaching |
Archives: Spring 2005
Section 1-T-7:10-10:00p-Jocelyn Siler
In the course of this semester, we will explore the diversity of regional literature with an eye to its place in the larger literary traditions. Students will both read and hear works read aloud by some of Montana's leading authors, and will study both the craft and the content of their writings. Each meeting will showcase a regional poet or prose writer. Class meetings will open with discussion-a review of assigned readings and the critical, social, historical and/or political issues explored by the guest writer's work. Following a live reading, the writer will discuss his or her works with the class and answer questions. Students will prepare questions for the writers developed from a packet of readings and criticism. Grades are determined by attendance/participation, midterm and final examination.
The midterm and the final exam will require both short answer and longer essay responses to assigned reading, live readings and class lecture. The final is not comprehensive. As they will in discussion, in exams the students will be asked to analyze the writers' works in ways that address the larger issues of regionality: What role does western literature in general, and Montana literature in particular, play in the field of modern American works? What role might genre fiction take in portraying the cultural or social issues of a city, a state, a region? How is this an important role? What literary elements make a work "regional" and what elements might be considered "universal"? Following the guest's presentation, students interested in creative writing will have an unparalleled opportunity to question working writers/published authors about their careers and the elements of their craft. Included in the roster will be writers who produce poetry, novels, short stories, regional essay, nonfiction, detective fiction and memoir.
Note: Because this course meets only once per week, attendance is important. Because our meetings will feature guest writers reading from their own works, noise and disruptions, including your late arrival or early departure from class, will not be tolerated.
210A-3crs-Introduction to Creative Writing: Fiction
Section 1-TR-11:10-12:30p-Staff (Fiction Fellow)
Section 2-TR-2:10-3:30p-Staff (Fiction Fellow) (Open to ENGL/PREN majors)
Section 3-TR-12:40-2:00p-Robert Stubblefield (Consent of FIG Director req.)
An introductory writing workshop focused on the reading, discussion, and revision of students' short fiction. Students will also be introduced o models of fiction techniques. No prior experience in writing short fiction required.
211A-3crs-Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry
Section 1-TR-2:10-3:30p-Staff (Poet Fellow)
Section 2-TR-11:10-12:30p-Staff (Poet Fellow) (Open to ENGL/PREN majors)
An introductory writing workshop focused on the reading, discussion, and revision of students' poems. Students also will be introduced to models of poetic techniques. No prior experience in writing poetry required.
310A-3crs-Creative Writing: Fiction (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-TR-2:10-3:30p-Kate Gadbow
Section 2-TR-3:40-5:00p-Brady Udall (Visiting Faculty)
This is a fiction-writing course for upper-level undergraduates, and admission is on the basis of a writing sample submitted to the instructor. Students will write two stories and revise both of them. Both of the stories and one revision will be discussed in class. Class participants will also prepare written critiques of the work discussed. Exercises will address technical aspects of writing fiction. Outside reading will be required.
311A-3crs-Creative Writing: Poetry (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-TR-3:40-5:00p-Karen Volkman
Section 2-TR-12:40-2:00p-Karen Volkman
This is an intermediate poetry workshop involving critical analysis of student work, as well as reading and discussion of poems by established poets. On a weekly basis we will examine students' poems and the practical issues in poetics (descriptive language, syntax, diction, etc.) they bring to light. Be prepared to do imitations; some memorization may also be required.
395-3crs-Intro to Creative Writing-Non-Fiction (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-TR-2:10-3:30p-Judy Blunt
Introduction to various forms of nonfiction writing, including memoir, interactive journalism, travel and nature writing, personal and lyrical essay. Students will read a wide variety of nonfiction prose, and complete six creative writing assignments. Selected essays will be presented for workshop. Students applying for this course must submit a writing sample to the instructor and obtain consent. Text required.
410-3crs-Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-T-3:40-6:30p-Kevin Canty
An advanced writing workshop in which student manuscripts are read and criticized. Rewriting of work already begun (in ENCR 310 classes) will be encouraged.
411-3crs-Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-W-3:10-6:00p-Prageeta Sharma (Visiting Faculty)
This is an intermediate poetry workshop involving critical analysis of student work, as well as reading and discussion of poems by established poets. On a weekly basis we will examine students' poems and the practical issues in poetics (descriptive language, syntax, diction, etc.) they bring to light. Revision will be central to the class; some memorization may also be required.
496-1-3crs-Independent Study (Consent of instructor and department chair required)
510-3crs-Fiction Workshop (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-T-3:40-6:30p-Danzy Senna (Kittredge Visiting Writer)
This is a fiction-writing workshop for MFA graduate students, with primary emphasis on the short story. We will devote considerable attention to the process of revision. Participants will contribute written critiques of the work discussed in class.
Section 2-R-3:40-6:30p-Kevin Canty
Students will read and write short stories, engage in discussions about craft, and subject themselves to a few experimental exercises.
511-3crs-Poetry Workshop (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-W-6:10-9:00p-Karen Volkman
This is an advanced workshop devoted to critical analysis and revision of poems. We will discuss student work in light of central problems in poetics, with particular emphasis on the relationship between voice (evidence of human presence) and description (evidence of world). Limited to graduate students in the M.F.A. program.
Section 2-T-3:40-6:30p-Prageeta Sharma (Visiting Faculty)
512-3crs-Nonfiction Workshop (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-6:10-9:00p-Judy Blunt
A creative writing workshop focused primarily on personal essay. Attention given to writing and publishing professional magazine essays. Students complete two substantial essays.
514-3crs-Techniques of Modern Fiction (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-Narratives of Childhood--W-7:10-10:00p-Brady Udall (Visiting Faculty)
This is a course for writers interested in learning techniques, devices and narrative strategies for writing about childhood. We'll be reading mostly literary fiction-novels, short stories-but we'll also take a look at a couple of brief memoirs, at least one young adult novel, some narrative poetry and possibly a comic book or two (for those who like pictures with their literature). Along with written responses to weekly reading assignments, students will be required to write several kinds of childhood narratives using different styles, time-strategies and point-of-view modes.
516-3crs-Topics in Creative Writing (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-Topics in Creative Writing: Autobiography as Hybrid Form--W-3:10-6:00p-Danzy Senna (Kittredge Visiting Writer)
In this course we will examine works of autobiography that push against the limits of the genre-- that is, works that break the traditional categories that separate memoir from fiction, image and word, literary criticism from biography, and larger history from personal memoir. What is gained by the hybrid form? What questions does it raise for us about the nature of memory and the limits of traditional memoir? Where does it succeed in lifting the genre out of the realm of the solipsistic, and where does it fail? How can we apply these questions to our own works in progress? Readings will include Paul Auster, W.G. Sebald, Lorrie Moore, Rick Moody, Siri Hustvedt, Richard Rodriguez, Kenzaburo Oe, Chris Kraus, Virginia Woolf, Michael Ondaatje, Rian Malan, and Vladamir Nabokov, among others. Students will be required to write their own autobiographical pieces and share them with the class.
Section 2-Topics in Creative Writing: Comparative Translation, a Workshop ("Against Translation for Poems")-R-3:40-6:30p-Patricia Goedicke
In basic agreement with Frost's famous and by now far too often repeated remark that "Poetry is what's lost in translation", this workshop will not focus on poetry translation per se, but rather on helping students to vary -- and hopefully to broaden as well as deepen -- their own poetic practice. By fully committing themselves to the practice and point of view of poems written by other, preferably Master Poets, through making their own translations of the poems and then defending them against the work of earlier translators, students will investigate and experience, almost mano a mano, the tactics as well as the overall strategies of their chosen poems, and thus provide themselves with the perfect arena for experimenting and joining forces with entirely new (foreign!) and therefore uniquely different ways of solving some of the problems poets everywhere must deal with. Engagement with the work of these other poets will be intense, intimate, active and practical, and require of the student serious meditation on how best to present his or her answers to such questions as "How did Neruda acomplish that extraordinary 'turn'?" Or "What was in Akhmatova's or Li Po's mind when s/h used that particular image (and not, say, the substitute provided by another translator?)" "Why did that translator choose that image?" "How does it relate to the poem as a whole, its rhythms, its emotional trajectory,?" or even just "Why did so and so use that word and not this one?"etc.
Students need not be fluent in the language of the poems they choose, but will be required to make translations of several poems for which they must be able to:
It will be hard. It will be deeply absorbing work. But I know from experience it will be fun. We will gobble up dictionaries. Sometimes we will stand stunned, in awe of the absolute rightness of a single word or image. And we will, most certainly, be frustrated. But we will laugh, sometimes hilariously. And above all we will learn.
Required Texts: William Gass' READING RILKE; Stanley Burnshaw's THE POEM ITSELF. Suggested Texts: George Steine, IAFTER BABEL; Edward Honig, THE POET'S OTHER VOICE, CONVERSATIONS ON LITERARY TRANSLATION; John Felstiner, THE WAY TO MACCHU PICCHU.
596-1-3crs-Graduate Independent Study (Consent of instructor and graduate chair required)
599-1-12crs-Thesis-ARRANGE-Staff
NOTE: During the autumn semester, ENEX 101 is restricted to students whose last name begins with the letters A-L. During the spring semester, ENEX 101 is restricted to students whose last name begins with the letters M-Z.
100: Basic Composition (2 cr; placement determined by score on Writing Placement Exam or referral by ENEX 101 instructor.)
Emphasis on forming, structuring, and developing ideas, and generally preparing students for ENEX 101; tutorial emphasis on mechanics in special class hour to be arranged with instructor.See section schedule on the Composition Program's website.
101: English Composition (3 cr; Prerequisite: ENEX 100, or proof of passing score on Writing Placement Exam, or referral by ENEX 100 instructor.)
Focus on critical reading and argumentative writing; emphasis on structure, development of ideas, clarity, style, and diction. Students expected to write without major faults in grammar or usage. Credit not allowed for both ENEX 101 and COM 101.See section schedule on the Composition Program's website.
195-3crs-Advanced Composition for the Disciplines (Prereq., ENEX 101. Lower-Division Writing Course)
Advanced Composition is designed to promote particular disciplinary interests. There will be sections devoted to writings in and about the Natural Sciences, a second to the Social Sciences, a third to Business, and a fourth to the Humanities. Emphasizing critical reading and writing, these courses will seek to develop a more self-conscious understanding of the rhetorical dimension of writing, especially (though not exclusively) in the disciplines. Students will read and analyze a selection of classic and contemporary disciplinary texts-in a variety of genres-and will learn to write about them in clear, professional prose.Section 1-Natural Science-TR-12:40-2:00p-Joe Campana
Section 2-Social Science-MWF-11:10-12:00p-Staff
Section 3-Business-TR-2:10-3:30p-Staff
Section 4-Humanities-MWF-9:10-10:00a-Robert Stubblefield
198: Cooperative Education Experience (1-12 cr; ARRANGE: Chris Knight, Prerequisite: consent of department chair and Cooperative Education Office)
Extended classroom experience which provides practical application of classroom learning during placement off campus. Prior approval must be obtained from the faculty supervisor and the Cooperative Education Office.
395-3crs-Special Topics: Women, Writing, and Rhetoric-MWF-12:10-1:00-Kate Ryan
Historically, the study of rhetoric - the art of communication - has focused largely on men speaking in the public domain as lawyers, politicians, and citizens. However, in the last twenty-five years, scholars have begun to study how women achieve their goals in writing and speaking situations to learn about the ways gender influences communication practices. This course offers students the opportunity to identify and explore the rhetorical strategies used by a selection of historical and contemporary women writers. We'll read primary works by historical women like Ida B. Wells and Elizabeth Cady Stanton as well as contemporary women, including Paula Gunn Allen, Toni Morrison, and anthropologist Ruth Behar. In addition, we'll also read critical essays about women's writing practices, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Students will write informal responses to readings, a rhetorical analysis of a piece of writing, reflections on their own writing practices, and a final paper. The course will explore the following questions: What are the strategies women writers have used to achieve their goals? What is women's rhetoric? What can women's rhetoric teach us - men and women - about our own writing practices?TEXTS: Shirley Wilson Logan, ed. With Pen and Voice: A Critical Anthology of Nineteenth-Century African-American Women; Andrea Lunsford, ed. Reclaiming Rhetorica: Women in the Rhetorical Tradition; Joy Ritchie and Kate Ronald, eds. Available Means: An Anthology of Women's Rhetoric(s).
398: Cooperative Educational Experience (1-12 cr; ARRANGE: Chris Knight; Prerequisite: consent of department chair and Cooperative Education Office)
540: Teaching College Composition (1 cr, restricted to ENEX 100/101 TAs)
Section 1-M-3:10-5:00p-Kate Ryan
Section 2-M-3:10-5:00p-Eric Reimer and Joe Campana
120L-3crs-Introduction to Critical Interpretation (Lower-Division Writing Course)
Section 1-MWF-12:10-1:00p-Rob Browning (Visiting Faculty)
Study of how readers make meaning of texts and how texts influence readers. Emphasis on interpreting literary texts: close reading, critical analysis and effective writing.
121L-3crs-Introduction to Poetry (Lower-Division Writing Course)
Section 1-MWF-9:10-10:00a-Ashby Kinch
This course will encourage students to develop and sustain an intimate relationship with poetry--with its sound, its shape, its feel, its prickly and often difficult meaning-and to convert that relationship into meaningful acts of interpretation in both oral contexts (class discussion) and written forms (on-line explication papers, formal essays). This course will argue that seeking out pleasure lies at the heart of good reading, which in turn produces the most interesting and productive interpretations. Seeking out pleasure in poetry, however, requires expanding one's range of experience, including the paradoxical "pleasure" of direct experience with difficult emotions (anger, resentment, jealousy) and troubling states of mind (anxiety, confusion, cognitive dissonance), as well as the more obviously pleasurable encounters with what we (perhaps too casually) call the "beauty" of written words. This course will, in fact, dwell on questions of verbal beauty, thinking of the complex ways that beauty inspires, confuses, befuddles, enlightens, and transforms us, if we are open to the experience.
Students will acquire a range of practical reading skills, including basic analysis of poetic form and intensive study of poetic diction. Students will be expected to hone those skills in bi-weekly explication papers of 500-750 words each (2-3 pp.). Students will also acquire a working vocabulary of poetic terms, which will be tested in periodic quizzes. As the central work of the class, students will compose two analytical papers of 1000-1500 words each (4-6 pp.).
Section 2-MWF-2:10-3:00p-Jocelyn Siler
An introduction to the techniques of reading and writing about poetry with emphasis on the lyric and other shorter forms.
222L-3crs-British Literature Through the 18th Century
Section 1-TR-3:40-5:00p-Rob Browning (Visiting Faculty) (Open to ENGL/PREN majors only)
Section 2-TR-9:40-11:00a-John Hunt
Representative works from the Anglo-Saxon period through the Enlightenment, with some attention to Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton.
223L-3crs-British Literature in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Lower-Division Writing Course)
Section 1-TR-12:40-2:00p-Rob Browning (Visiting Faculty)
Section 2-MWF-1:10-2:00p-Eric Reimer (Open to ENGL/PREN majors only)
As an introduction to British literature and a gateway to more specialized study within this field, this course will survey a dizzying range of poets, novelists, dramatists, and essayists; as it does so, you will become acquainted with the significant characteristics of some of the major British literary-historical periods (Romantic, Victorian, Modern, Contemporary). Thus, in addition to practicing close reading on individual texts, we will discuss the social, historical, and political contexts of the authors and their works, as well as attend to matters of genre, form, and literary tradition. There is no thematic organization for the course, but we will throughout the semester be considering the changing notions of self, language, and nation, especially as they are pressured by nature, religion, science, and historical trauma. In this course students will write critical essays, work closely with poetic form, sharpen research skills, and sample contemporary literary theory, but everything will begin with (and depend upon) committed and energetic reading of the assigned texts, will be drawn from the Norton Anthology of English Literature (seventh edition) and will include novels by Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse) and Jean Rhys (Wide Sargasso Sea).
Section 80-MWF-9:10-10:00a-John Glendening (Consent of Davidson Honors College required)
The goal of this course is to familiarize students with the history of British literature (authors, works, periods, and trends) from 1800 to W. W. I, helping them to place texts within their cultural and literary contexts and to comprehend, in general, the relationship between British literature and the shaping of the modern world. Students should gain understanding of relevant cultural issues (literacy, urbanism, class structure, capitalism, science, technology, religion, imperialism, and gender); of important literary movements (romanticism, realism, naturalism, aestheticism, and modernism); and of terms and concepts important for understanding literature. Midterm and final examinations will be given and three critical essays required. Most readings will be from an anthology, but the class will also read one or two novels.
224L-3crs-American Literature to 1865 (Lower-Division Writing Course)
Section 1-MWF-2:10-3:00p-Jill Bergman (Open to ENGL/PREN majors only)
Section 2-MWF-12:10-1:00p-Jill Bergman
In this course, we will study significant literary texts from the early part of American history. We will examine the way this literature has shaped and been shaped by some of the important historical events and ideological forces in U.S. history, such as Calvinism, slavery and abolition, the development of a national identity, the industrial revolution, and the "woman question." Since literary history is an interaction between the dominant ideas of a given time period and the individuals who grapple with those ideas, we will seek to discover the extent to which the work we read challenges or endorses existing ideals. Guiding our inquiries this semester will be the investigation of the development of an American cultural identity and the role of literature in that development. How have writers conceived of the notion of "American," and what traits or ideals do they associate with that classification? To whom has that title been available? Although we will explore texts within their historical, political, and literary contexts, our analysis will depend upon close engagement with the texts themselves. Therefore we'll also spend significant time developing close reading skills.
TEXTS: Baym, The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 6th Ed., Vols. A and B; Foster, The Coquette; Murfin and Ray, Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms; Hacker, A Pocket Style Manual.
225L-3crs-American Literature Since 1865 (Lower-Division Writing Course)
Section 1-MWF-4:10-5:00p-Staff
Representative texts from the Civil War to the present.
Section 2-MWF-1:10-2:00p-Brady Harrison
English 225 explores a limited number of extraordinary American poems, stories, and novels published after the Civil War. We'll situate the texts in their cultural, historical, and especially literary context, and explore movements such as realism, regionalism, naturalism, modernism, and postmodernism. The course will also involve an introduction to basic literary terms and concepts, and we'll work on the close reading and interpretation of literary texts. Authors likely to be studied include Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sherwood Anderson, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Langston Hughes, D'Arcy McNickle, Sandra Cisneros, Bharti Mukherjee, Thomas Pynchon, and others.
Texts (subject to revision): Lauter, Paul (ed). The Heath Anthology of American Literature (Vol. 2); Welch, James. Winter in the Blood.
Section 80--HONORS-TR-11:10-12:30p-Lynn Itagaki (Consent of Davidson Honors College required)
This course will examine a broad spectrum of important literary texts by U.S. writers after 1865. We will look at how these novelists, poets, playwrights, and essayists use literature to reflect and rework their contemporary historical and literary contexts. The course introduces students to reading the principal forms of literature (poetry, prose, fiction, and drama) analytically. Strengthening knowledge of literary interpretation and analysis, this course will encourage students to examine what writers convey through their fictional works and how to analyze the ramifications and influence of these literary texts on their critical thinking.
301-3crs-Applied Literary Criticism (Prereq. or coreq., 12 credits of lower division ENLT courses. Upper-Division Writing Course. NOT OPEN TO PREN MAJORS)
Section 1-MWF-9:10-10:00a-Michael McClintock
As the study of literature developed in the second half of the Twentieth Century, literary or critical theory has moved nearly to the center of the enterprise. The literary text, however variously defined or described (in and by theory, of course), remains at the focus, but critical reading of the text cannot be isolated--or insulated--from theory. In this course we shall both study a fairly wide variety of critical positions and test their application to a well-known literary text. Short papers; no final examination; attendance recorded.
TEXTS: Rice and Waugh, Modern Literary Theory; Conrad, Lord Jim (Norton Critical ed., 2nd ed.); Murfin and Ray, The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms; Hacker, A Pocket Style Manual.
Section 2-TR-3:40-5:00p-Louise Economides
Section 3-TR-12:40-2:00p-Louise Economides
Study of various literary theories and their application to literary texts.
320-3crs-Shakespeare (Prereq., ENLT 301 or consent of instructor. Upper-Division Writing Course. NOT OPEN TO PREN MAJORS)
Section 1-MWF-10:10-11:00a-Stewart Justman
Section 2-MWF-2:10-3:00p-Stewart Justman
A comedy, a history, two tragedies, a problem play, and a romance.
321-3crs-Studies in a Major Author (Prereq., ENLT 301 or consent of instructor. NOT OPEN TO PREN MAJORS. Upper-Division Writing Course.)
Section 1-Virginia Woolf & Penelope Fitzgerald--TR-12:40-2:00p-Christopher Knight
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) and Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) are two of Britain's most prominent twentieth-century novelists, in addition to working in a host of other genres, including criticism and biography. Focusing upon their novels, we will spend approximately a half-semester upon each. While the reading list remains, at this point, tentative, likely titles include Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves, Between the Acts, The Beginning of Spring, The Gates of Angels, and The Blue Flower.
322-3crs-Studies in Literary History (Prereq., ENLT 301 or consent of instructor. NOT OPEN TO PREN MAJORS. Upper-Division Writing Course.)
Section 80-Romantic Tradition/HONORS-TR-11:10-12:30p-Robert Pack (Consent of Davidson Honors College required)
Study of influences on and innovations in the works of various authors within a particular literary historical period in England or America.
323-3crs-Studies in Literary Forms (Prereq., ENLT 301 or consent of instructor. NOT OPEN TO PREN MAJORS. Same as LS 323. Upper-Division Writing Course.)
Section 1-Ethnic-American Literature-TR-2:10-3:30p-Lynn Itagaki
This course examines a range of ethnic American literary texts since the late nineteenth century. We will examine the central debates in contemporary American literary studies: media images and stereotypes, generational conflict, race and class, diasporic and transnational, and gender and sexuality. The course is geared toward placing the texts in their historical contexts and identifying how these creative productions reflect the minority communities they portray.
326-3crs-Doctors' Stories/Honors (Prereq., nine credits in ENLT or consent of instructor. NOT OPEN TO PREN MAJORS. Consent of Davidson Honors College required.)
Section 80-TR-9:40-11:00a-Herbert Swick
Selected works by physician writers, exploring literary approaches to themes of illness and healing. Authors include Anton Chekhov, William Carlos Williams, Richard Selzer, Dannie Abse and others.
TEXTS: Richard Selzer, The Doctor Stories and Raising the Dead; Abraham Verghese, My Own Country; William Carlos Williams, The Doctor Stories; Faculty Pac.
329-3crs-Native American Literature (Same as NAS 329)
Section 1-MW-2:10-3:30p-Angelic Lawson (NAS faculty)
349-3crs-Medieval Literature (Prereq., ENLT 301 or consent of instructor. NOT OPEN TO PREN MAJORS)
Section 1-"Tales of Sentence and Solace": Medieval Frame Narratives--MWF-12:10-1:00p-Ashby Kinch
Harry Bailey, the Host in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, frames the tale-telling competition by describing the putative winner as the one who will tell "tales of best sentence and most solaas," suggesting that the best stories are those that wed meaning with pleasure. This class will explore the late medieval vogue for frame narratives: story collections with a dramatic or conceptual framework that foregrounds major interpretive issues even as it facilitates indulgence in the manifold pleasures of storytelling variety. We will read and analyze selections from: Boccaccio's Decameron and Famous Women (De Mulieribus Claribus); Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies; and John Gower's Confessio Amantis. Students will be encouraged to think about the range of interpretive responses stimulated by the collections, conducting close readings of individual stories as well as identifying thematic patterns across the stories. Students will also be encouraged to think about the social and intellectual contexts embedded in the collections, reflecting on the way stories serve as vehicles for ethical debate about contentious cultural matters. An especially prominent feature of these collections is the way they propose new models for female conduct, which we will examine in great detail by thinking about the relationship between Boccaccio's On Famous Women and Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies, as well as analyzing representations of gender in Chaucer and Gower.
Students will be required to make a class presentation; write bi-weekly position papers; write a short piece of comparative literary analysis (4-5 pp.); and write a longer research paper (8-10 pp.) on a topic devised in consultation with me.
TEXTS: Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron. Tr. G.H. McWilliam; Boccaccio, Giovanni. Famous Women. Tr. Virginia Brown; Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. A Norton Critical Edition; de Pizan, Christine. The Book of the City of Ladies. Tr. Early Jeffrey Richards.
358-3crs-British Modernism (Prereq., ENLT 301 or consent of instructor)
Section 1-MWF-11:10-12:00p-Michael McClintock
The last time one century turned into another, Great Britain was--and had been for over a century--the most successful empire-builder in history. That geopolitical fact was enough, by itself, to depress many writers; coupled with Victorian science, Victorian economics, and Victorian religion (not to mention Victorian taste), it pressed many of those writers into a reluctant minuet with the fundamental and unsettling epistemological questions: What does it all mean? Who knows? (The logical, largely American corollary question--Who cares?--arose rather later.) The heroism of the writers whose work we shall discuss is that they all attempted to answer those questions, even when they would have preferred not to.
TEXTS: Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim; T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets; E. M. Forster, A Passage to India; Graham Greene, The End of the Affair; Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles; James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse; W. B. Yeats, Collected Poems.
371-3crs-Literature and the Environment (Prereq., ENLT 224 or 225 and ENLT 301 or consent of instructor. Consent of instructor required on override slip. Upper- Division Writing Course.)
Section 1-TR-9:40-11:00a-Louise Economides
372-3crs-Gay and Lesbian Studies (Prereq., ENLT 301 or consent of instructor. Same as WS 372. Upper-Division Writing Course)
Section 1-TR-3:40-5:00p--Casey Charles
This course investigates the array of marginalized GLBTI perspectives as presented in different genres, including novels, plays, and poetry. Studying the fundamentals of queer theory, we will read texts that span the homoerotic canon from Gilgamesh to Written on the Body, paying attention to the intersections and divergences in the coalition that makes up the emerging queer canon, focusing on issues of gender, coming out, discrimination, and historical development. Students take reading quizzes and write two essays.
TEXTS: Hall, Queer Theories; The Epic of Gilgamesh; Hall, The Well of Loneliness; Winterson, Written on the Body; O'Neill, At Swim, Two Boys; Schulman, Shimmer; Waters, Tipping the Velvet; Eugenides, Middlesex; Powell, Cocktail; McNally, Corpus Cristi
375-3crs-Gender and Sexuality 20th Century Fiction (Same as LS 375)
Section 1-TR-9:40-11:00a-Ruth Vanita
398-1-12crs-Cooperative Education Experience (Prereq., consent of department)
420-3crs-History of Criticism and Theory (Prereq., ENLT 301 and six credits in literature courses numbered 300 or higher or consent of instructor. Same as LS 460.)
Section 1-MWF-2:10-3:00p-Michael McClintock
The embeddedness of criticism's roots in the turf of philosophy exemplifies the inseparability of criticism and theory. We shall follow the evolution and explore some of the implications of this entanglement. Several papers; no final examination.
TEXTS: Adams and Searle, Critical Theory Since Plato (3rd ed.).
421-3crs-Topics in Critical Theory (Prereq., Prereq., ENLT 301 and six credits in literature courses numbered 300 or higher or consent of instructor. Same as LS 461.)
Section 1-Postcolonial Theory and Literature-TR-2:10-3:30p-Kathleen Kane
430-3crs-Senior Seminar in Literature (Prereq., ENLT 301 and six credits in literature courses numbered 300 or higher or consent
of instructor. Same as MCLG 440 and LS 455)
Section 1-Comparative Literature: Medieval Lyric-MWF-3:10-4:00p-Ashby Kinch
NOTE: There is no language pre-requisite for this course; disregard any such notice if you encounter it in the Course Catalog.
The medieval lyric provides a fascinating platform for the comparative study of literature: the major varieties of European lyric writing share common cultural parameters (the Latin tradition of rhetoric, a Church liturgy that provided a common source for musical and poetic forms), but have unique features that distinguish them one from the other on formal, thematic, and stylistic grounds. This course will provide students with a basic introduction to the reading of medieval lyric, and then encourage students to practice meticulous, close reading of poems, comparing them between and among the different vernacular traditions. We will read a body of Latin poems and hymns in translation to get a sense of the common literary heritage that feeds the various vernacular traditions. Since English has the distinction of having produced the first vernacular lyrics in any European language (the Anglo-Saxon elegies of the Exeter Book), we will then read those poems, before moving on to the more well-known literary corpus of the troubadours and trobairitz (female troubadours) of southern France, the trouveres of northern France, the German minnesanger, and the Italian writers of the dolce stil nuovo. We will also spend several weeks discussing key poetic genres and forms that emerged in the medieval period, including: the alba, the pastourelle, and the sonnet.
All readings will be in translation, but students with primary language skills in French, Latin, Italian, Spanish, and German will be encouraged to utilize those skills in close reading of primary texts. Secondary readings on electronic reserve will provide some historical and literary context.
Students will be required to give two class presentations; write bi-weekly explication papers on individual poems; and write a longer, comparative research paper (8-10 pp.).
TEXTS: Alighieri, Dante. La Vita Nuova. Tr. Barbara Reynolds; The Earliest English Poems (3rd Edition) tr. and intro. Michael Alexander; Lyrics of the Middle Ages: An Anthology, ed. James J. Wilhelm;
Section 2-Multicultural Britain-MWF-11:10-12:00p-Eric Reimer
"My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost." So begins Hanif Kureishi's novel, The Buddha of Suburbia. This course will concern itself with the implications of that "almost," particularly regarding notions (and myths) of Britishness which have been reconfigured by immigration, history, and the collision of social worlds. It's an "almost" which affirms and complicates Daniel Defoe's late seventeenth-century sense of "the mixtures" of English society: "Fate jumbled them all together, God knows how; / Whate'er they were, they're true born English now." It's an "almost" which simultaneously contests England's vision of itself as both culturally and ethnically homogeneous and asks for the right of certain "Britons" to participate fully in the main narrative of British life.
Generally representing the postmodern and postcolonial British experience since 1945, this course's texts will, then, in various ways explore new ways of being British. They will validate a multicultural and multiracial Britishness by challenging and subverting authentic and fixed notions of identity and culture. They will struggle against the residual meanings of Britishness-with its nostalgia for and tropes of the imperial past-in favor of ambivalent, mutable identities. They will pressure the construct of the nation. They will renegotiate rules of belonging and redefine the idea of "home." They will allow us to explore the tensions and enrichment of contemporary British society.
The primary texts for this course will be drawn from the following: Samuel Selvon's The Lonely Londoners, Ian Fleming's Dr. No, Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, Robert McLiam Wilson's Eureka Street, Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia, Timothy Mo's Sour Sweet, Monica Ali's Brick Lane, Bernandine Evaristo's Lara, and films by Stephen Frears and Neil Jordan. Our theoretical material will be drawn from Paul Gilroy's There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack and After Empire, Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, Robert Crawford's Devolving English Literature, Rushdie's Imaginary Homelands, Homi Bhabha's The Location of Culture, and others.
495-3crs-Special Topics
Section 1-Multicultural Literature in Contemporary Germany-MWF-1:10-2:00p-Hiltrudi Arens (Same as GERM/LS/MCLG/WS 495)
496-1-3crs-Independent Study-ARRANGE (Prereq., consent of instructor and chair, and junior or senior standing.)
499-1-9crs-Honors Thesis-ARRANGE (Prereq., consent of department chair required.)
500-3crs-Introduction to Graduate Studies. (Open to graduate students in English)
(Cannot be taken in lieu of required seminars in English. OPEN TO ENGLISH GRADUATE STUDENTS ONLY)
Section 1-R-2:10-5:00p-Brady Harrison
English 500, a course strongly recommended for entering MA students, MFAs considering an MA, and advanced undergraduates planning on graduate studies in English at the University of Montana or elsewhere, asks a basic question: What do you need to excel in an English graduate program? Part of the answer: expertise in research, proficiency in a variety of academic genres and skills, and a far-ranging and sophisticated understanding of critical theory. The course aims to deepen your abilities in these areas. To this end, English 500 consists of three components:
TEXTS (subject to revision): Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism, 2nd Ed; Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious; Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: An Anthology, 2nd Ed.
520-3crs-Seminar in British Literature (Open to graduate students in CRWR, ENGL, EVST)
Section 1-Crime and Detection in Victorian Fiction-R-7:10-10:00p-John Glendening (Open to graduate students in CRWR, ENGL, EVST, LING)
Concerned with Victorian detective fiction and the kindred category of "sensation fiction," this seminar explores the nature of these genres, how and when they developed, and the social and literary factors that help explain their popularity in the second half of the nineteenth century. In trying to understand this type of literature, the course will take into account such socio-historical factors as science, technology, class structure, gender, urbanization, population growth, literacy, and in general the interests, hopes, and fears of Victorian readers. Texts will consist of novels, short stories, and critical readings. Authors will include Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Students will turn in a seminar paper at the end of the semester.
Section 2-Shakespeare and Ovid-W-3:40-6:30p-John Hunt
The Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC to ca. 17 AD) had a big influence on writers of the English Renaissance a millenium and a half later. Although Ovid was a fundamentally unserious writer--ostentatiously cynical, endlessly ironic, shamelessly self-promoting and self-mocking--he foregrounded many problems that appealed to the more civic-minded William Shakespeare. Among these Ovidian-inflected subjects in Shakespeare's works are the intersection of sexual desire and violence, the intersection of animal and human behavior, responses to the transience of earthly things, psychological mutability, rhetorics of seduction, the battle of the sexes, incest, narcissism, ideas of Nature, myths of paradisal Origin, resistance to Power, and the urgency of voicing female experience. We will read a large part of Ovid's work in translation: the Metamorphoses (including some passages from the 1567 translation by Arthur Golding that Shakespeare knew well), the Amores (including passages from the translation by fellow theatrical pioneer Christopher Marlowe), and some of The Art of Love, the Heroides, and the Fasti. From Shakespeare's large body of work we will read a number of the Sonnets, the two long narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, short excerpts from various plays, and about half a dozen plays in their entirety. Likely candidates for this last category include Titus Andronicus, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard II, Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. There will also be some critical reading on the two authors and their historical contexts. Other requirements: one presentation with responsibility for guiding class discussion, one long paper, and several short, informal written responses.
521-3crs-Seminar in American Literature (Open to graduate students in CRWR, ENGL, EVST, LING)
Section 1-Postmodern/Post-Postmodern Fiction-T-1:10-4:00p-Brady Harrison
Section 2-Cultures of American Imperialism-M-7:10-10:00p-Kathleen Kane
522-3crs-Seminar in Comparative Literature (Open to graduate students in CRWR, ENGL, EVST, LING. Same as MCLG 522)
Section 1-Postcolonial Literature of Francophon-R-6:30-9:00p-Fazia Aitel
595-3crs-Special Topics (Open to graduate students in CRWR, ENGL, EVST, LING)
Section 1-Documentaries and DocuDrama-T-7:10-10:00p-Casey Charles
This course follows the development of the docudrama, primarily on stage but also in film. Using Foucault's notion of the archive as well as Boal's ideas about legislative theater, we will study how the documentary transforms various "nonfiction" discourses-political, legal, medical, personal, and journalistic-into dramatic narratives, using the tools of fiction to create a compelling representation. Students will be asked to accumulate their own archive on a subject of their choosing and produce out of those "documents" a "drama" or narrative of their own. A short essay based on a presentation and quizzes on the reading will supplement each student's docu-project.
TEXTS: Foucault, Michel, The Archaeology of Knowledge; Buchner, Danton's Death; Kaufman, Gross Indecency; Mann, The Execution of Harvey Milk; Deavere-Smith, Twilight; Kaufman, The Laramie Project; Dietz, God's Country; Byrn, Tom, et al., Letters to the Editor: 200 Years in the Live of an American Town; Moore, T. J., In the Heart of the Wood.
There will be screening of documentary films during the semester, including Burns, Unforgivable Blackness; Epstein, The Life and Times of Harvey Milk; The Brandon Teena Story; The Laramie Project; Naming Jennifer
596-1-9crs-Graduate Independent Study (Prereq., consent of instructor and chair.)
598-1-9crs-Cooperative Education Experience (Prereq., consent of department)
599-1-6crs-Thesis
398-1-3crs-Cooperative Education Experience (Prereq., consent of department)
439-3crs-Studies in Young Adult Literature
Section 1-TR-8:10-9:30a-Beverly Chin
This course is designed for beginning English language arts teachers, library media specialists, reading specialists, and other individuals interested in middle school and high school literature. Through this course, beginning teachers will gain knowledge and appreciation of young adult literature. We will read representative texts covering the history, genres, authors, and themes of literature for students in the middle school and high school. We will engage in literature circles, book talks, and large and small group discussions as we respond to and reflect upon our reading.
This course is a pre-requisite to ENT 441 Teaching Literature.
440-3crs-Teaching Writing (Prereq., C&I 303, senior standing and consent of instructor)
Section 1-TR-11:10-12:30p-Heather Bruce
Emphasis on teaching writing and reading in grades 5-12. Research about development and maturity of readers/writers, strategies for teaching writing and reading in all content areas, criteria for evaluating writing/reading, peer-coaching methods, writing/reading workshops, assignment characteristics, and grading practices. Required of students pursuing secondary teaching certificates.
441-3crs-Teaching Reading and Literature (Prereq., ENT 439, admission to teacher education, and consent of instructor)
Section 1-TR-2:10-3:30p-Heather Bruce
Emphasis on various approaches to teaching literature: generic, thematic, chronological and interdisciplinary. Includes techniques for developing evaluative, interpretive, perceptive, and personal responses to prose, poetry, film and other media. Explores student-centered curriculum, with emphasis on developmental abilities in reading, speaking, listening and viewing. Special emphasis on language and language development. Teaching majors and minors in areas other than English should enroll in ENT 440.
442-3crs-Teaching Oral Language and Media Literacy (Prereq., ENLI/LING 465, admission to teacher education, and consent of instructor)
Section 1-TR-9:40-11:00a-Beverly Chin
This course is designed for individuals who are interested in teaching the language arts of speaking, listening, and viewing. The course focuses on the theory, research, and pedagogy of oral language and media literacy as well as lesson design and curriculum issues in the English language arts. Using best classroom practices and recent research from professional associations, such as the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association, beginning teachers learn to teach oral language (speaking and listening skills) and media literacy in grades 5-12. Students experience the language arts through workshop activities, readers' theater, creative drama, cooperative learning groups, role playing, media, technology, and other speaking/listening/viewing methods.
ENLI 465/LING 465 Structure and History of English for Teachers is a pre-requisite for this course.
548-3crs-Portfolios and Assessment in English Language Arts (Prereq., teaching experience, or senior standing [3.0 GPA and petition] with consent of instructor.)
Section 1-T-5:10-8:00p-Beverly Chin
We learn about our students' growth and our teaching practices through informal and formal assessment. In this course, we will explore many forms of assessment. We will also investigate the portfolio as an assessment strategy that aligns curriculum and instruction. As we consider different types of portfolios, we will use the NCTE/IRA STANDARDS FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS to examine assessment of student accomplishment and the NBPTS STANDARDS to examine assessment of teacher accomplishment. By working with both student and teacher portfolios, we will discover the importance of standards, selection of entries, criteria for selection, collaboration, and reflection/metacognition in assessment.
593-1-4crs-Professional Paper
596-1-9crs-Graduate Independent Study
598-1-3crs-Cooperative Education Experience (Prereq., consent of department)
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