Fall 2007

Archives: Spring 2005 | Fall 2005 | Spring 2006 | Fall 2006 | Spring 2007

CREATIVE WRITING (ENCR)

110L–3crs–Montana Writers Live!

Section 1–T–7:10-10:00p–Robert Stubblefield

210A–3crs–Introduction to Creative Writing: Fiction

Section 1–MWF–12:10-1:00p–Robert Stubblefield (CONSENT OF FIG DIR. Req.)
Course Objectives: ENCR 210 is an introductory fiction writing class. We will focus on the craft of fiction writing and the components required for a successful short story. Initially, we will focus on stories from our textbook and supplemental handouts. Developing a critical acumen and becoming an active and discerning reader is the first step toward becoming a writer. We will explore the various methods for developing plot, form, and structure and essential elements such as believable, compelling characters, dialogue, and consistent point-of-view. Initial writings will include character sketches, dialogue exercises, and developing openings that beg the reader to turn the page. Writing is an exercise in faith and doubt—we will work to sustain your faith and overcome your doubts. Through the second half of the semester we will continue reading published texts, but the primary focus of the class will shift to student-generated work. You will be responsible for carefully reading the work of your peers and responding both in classroom discussion (workshop) and with written comments.
Section 2–TR–2:10-3:30p–Debra Earling (OPEN TO ENGL/PREN MAJ ONLY)
Section 3–TR–9:40-11:00a–Staff
Section 4–TR–11:10-12:30p–Staff
Section 5–MWF–3:10-4:00p–Staff

211A–3crs–Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry

Section 1–MWF–11:10-12:00p–White
Section 2–TR–12:40-2:00p–C. Moore (OPEN TO ENGL/PREN MAJORS)
Section 3–TR–3:40-5:00p–Shimoda

310A–3crs–Creative Writing: Fiction (Consent of Instructor Required)

Section 1–TR–2:10-3:30p–Robert Stubblefield
Section 2–TR–3:40-5:00p–Debra Earling
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–12:40-2:00p–Greg Pape
This is a writing workshop in which the primary texts are the students’ works-in-progress. The course will involve critical analysis of students’ drafts of poems, as well as reading and discussion of published poems. There will be a number of directed writing assignments, experiments, and exercises focused on elements of craft such as diction, imagery, rhythm and form.
Section 2–TR–2:10-3:30p–Karen Volkman
This creative writing workshop will focus on the exploration of poetic form. Using Eavan Boland and Mark Strand’s anthology The Making of a Poem as a central text, we will consider historical models and contemporary variations of major forms in the Western tradition, including the sonnet, sestina, and elegy. We will also explore notions of form which provide alternative models—including set forms from Eastern cultures (ghazal, haiku) and oral traditions—and innovations such as projective verse and the prose poem which directly respond to conventional prosodies. The goal is to extend awareness of the ongoing revision and adaptation of tradition to contemporary concerns and to the compulsions of the individual maker, and to empower participation in that dialogue. A further ambition is to make the history of forms a living and vital element in students’ relationship to their complex poetic legacy. You will write poems in the forms discussed as well as exploring a form-type or formal concern in a short final paper.

312A–3crs–Introduction to Creative Writing: Non-fiction (Consent of Instructor Required)

Section 1–MW–1:40-3:00p–Bryan DiSalvatore
Introduction to various forms of non-fiction writing, including memoir, interactive journalism, travel and nature writing, personal and lyrical essay. Students will read a wide variety of non-fiction prose and complete six creative writing assignments. Selected essays will be presented for workshops. 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–TR–12:40-2:00p–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–M–2:10-5:00p–Joanna Klink
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. Imitation and revision will be central to the class; some memorization may be required.

495–3crs–Special Topics (Consent of Instructor Required)

Section 1–T–3:40-6:30p–Stephen Amidon (Kittredge Visiting Writer)
The damaged hero plays a major role in contemporary fiction. This course will look at novels of self-destruction, unreliable narration and emotional deterioration. Martin Amis, Joan Didion, David Gates, Robert Stone, Michael Chabon and Don DeLillo will be among the authors considered. Students will be expected to contribute to class discussions, make an oral presentation, and write reaction papers that may take the form of imitations or parodies.

510–3crs–Fiction Workshop (Consent of Instructor Required)

Section 1–W–7:10-10:00p–Stephen Amidon (Kittredge Visiting Writer)
Writing prose fiction in a workshop setting. Work discussed may comprise a short story or sections of a novel/novella. Vigorous contributions to class discussions will be expected.
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–T–2:10-5:00p–Joanna Klink
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.

512–3crs–Non-fiction Workshop (Consent of Instructor Required)

Section 1–M–6:10-9:00p–Judy Blunt

515–3crs–Traditional Prosody (Consent of Instructor Required)

Section 1–R–3:40-6:30p–Greg Pape
In this course we will study prosody through example, experiments, and analysis. I will give assignments that focus on some aspect of prosody or form, and you will write your best within the limitations of the assignment. The goal of the course is to learn about traditional prosody (which includes free verse) and craft while writing the best poems you can. We will read and discuss in workshop the results of the assignments, as well as traditional and contemporary models.

516–3crs–Topics in Creative Writing (Consent of Instructor Required)

Section 1–R–3:40-6:30p–Bryan DiSalvatore
Arguably, the finest distillation of American non-fiction prose for the last 85 years has been found in the New Yorker magazine’s Talk of The Town section. Talk pieces are witty, immaculate and lyrical. They are, to quote Lillian Ross, “good little stories” that do the telling in inventive ways. The best of them offer “combustive revelations” of people and occasions, often by means of a sideways entrance. Presidential visit? The Talk reporter might concentrate his efforts on the photographer for the local paper, not the president himself. Important wedding? Who decorated the cake? Talk pieces—-whether they be interviews, “event pieces”, portraits, investigations, humorous personal essays or, as is often the case, a combination of these--require discipline, technical agility, swiftness, a feeling for facts (and facts within facts), a warm response to people, sensitivity to the oblong and, above all, curiosity. This class will use a single text—-The Fun of It, Lillian Ross, ed—-an anthology of New Yorker Talk pieces, as well as various and sundry handouts. We will, of course, try our hand at the form ourselves. Our primary arena will be our town, Missoula. We will brush its back trails, reveal its minor glories and eccentricities, rifle its odd pockets and shake down its self-satisfactions. We will do so by writing several, many, more than that, Talk pieces. We will do so without solemnity, without pouting, without angst, without pedantry, without malice. There will be no campaign shouting like southern diplomats—we will depict, not judge. We will strive for the sensitive and wry, the fresh, the undersung. As Emily Dickinson tells us, we will tell the truth but tell it slant. It will, I am convinced, be the sort of sustained exercise that can only help with the writing of other genres and other lengths. This will be an intensive class, with multiple—-perhaps even weekly--assignments. Talk pieces are done on deadline, as they are, in addition to all the above, topical. We will try to place the best work in various venues, both print and electronic. Bring your erasers and your cockeyes.
Section 2–W–7:10-10:00p– Karen Volkman
This special topics course will emphasize reading and discussion of several books of poetry and lyric writing dealing with the metropolis as a man-made landscape of desire, memory, possibility, and dream. We will consider questions of urbanism’s fragmentation of subject and space, beginning with consideration of the crowd as presence and phenomenon. We’ll consider the European haunted, spectral city in contrast to the American city of optimism and plurality and oppression. Many of these books operate at the boundaries of genre: Charles Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen is a pioneering work in the prose poem, no one is quite sure how to classify Andre Breton’s Nadja, and closer to our time, Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Sandra Cisneros’ House on Mango Street push lyrical fiction to a point at which distinctions between prose and poetry may be largely meaningless. We’ll discuss how these formal ambiguities relate to the strange crossings of history and immediacy that characterize urban experience.

EXPOSITORY WRITING (ENEX)

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.

100-2crs-Basic Composition (Prereq,, minus score on Writing Placement Exam or referral by ENEX 101 instructor.)

Section 1–TR–8:10-9:30a–Staff
Section 2–MWF–1:10-2:00p–Staff
Section 3–TR–12:40-2:00–Staff
Section 4–TR–2:10-3:30p–Staff
Section 5–TR–3:40-5:00P–Staff
Section 6–TR–8:10-9:30A–Staff
Section 7–MWF–9:10-10:00A–Staff
Section 8–TR–12:40-2:00p–Staff
Section 9–TR–2:10-3:30p–Staff
Section 10–TR–3:40-5:00p–Staff
Section 11–TR–8:10-9:30A–Staff
Section 12–MWF–12:10-1:00p–Staff
Section 13–TR–12:40-2:00p–Staff
Section 14–MWF–2:10-3:00p–Staff
Section 15–MWF–3:10-4:00P–Staff
Section 16–TR–8:10-9:30A–Staff
Section 17–MWF–12:10-1:00P–Staff
Section 19–TR–12:40-2:00P–Staff
Section 20–MW–2:10-3:30p–Staff
Section 21–MW–3:40-5:00p–Staff

101-3crs-English Composition (Prereq., ENEX 100, or proof of passing score on Writing Placement Exam, or referral by ENEX 100 instructor.)

Section 1–MWF–8:10-9:00a–Staff
Section 2–MWF–9:10-10:00a–Staff
Section 3–MWF–9:10-10:00a–Staff
Section 4–MWF–10:10-11:00a–Staff
Section 5–MWF–10:10-11:00a–Staff
Section 6–MWF–10:10-11:00a–Staff
Section 7–MWF–10:10-11:00a–Staff
Section 8–MWF–11:10-12:00p–Staff
Section 9–MWF–11:10-12:00p–Staff
Section 10–MWF–12:10-1:00p–Staff
Section 11–MWF–12:10-1:00p–Staff
Section 12–MWF–1:10-2:00p–Staff
Section 13–MWF–1:10-2:00p–Staff
Section 14–MWF–1:10-2:00p–Staff
Section 15–MWF–1:10-2:00p–Staff
Section 16–MWF–2:10-3:00p–Staff
Section 17–MWF–2:10-3:00p–Staff
Section 18–MWF–2:10-3:00p–Staff
Section 19–TR–7:10-8:30p–Staff
Section 20–TR–8:10-9:30a–Staff
Section 21–MWF–1:10-2:00p–Staff
Section 22–TR–12:40-2:00p-–Staff
Section 23–TR 11:10-12:30p--Staff
Section 24–TR–11:10-12:30p–Staff
Section 25–TR–3:40-5:00p–Staff
Section 26–TR–12:40-2:00p–Staff
Section 28–TR–2:10-3:30p–Staff
Section 30–MWF–10:10-11:00a–Staff
Section 32–MWF–12:10-1:00p–Staff
Section 34–MWF–2:10-3:00p–Staff
Section 36–MWF–9:10-10:00a–Staff
Section 37–MWF–9:10-10:00a–Staff
Section 80-MWF–9:10-10:00a–Staff (HONORS)
Section 81–HONORS--MWF–12:10-1:00p–Stewart Justman
Section 85–MWF–11:10-12:00p–Staff (HONORS FIG SECTION)
Section 99–Arrange–Mary Kriley (Consent of FIG Dir. Req.)

200-3crs-Advanced Composition (Prereq., ENEX 101, Lower-Division Writing Course)

Section 1–MW–1:10-2:30p–Staff (Art of the Essay)
Section 2–MWF– 10:10-11:00a–Staff (Humanities)
Section 3–TR–11:10-12:30p–Staff (Social Sciences)
Section 4–TR–12:40-2:00p–Staff (Bus. & Economics)
Section 5–MWF–9:10-10:00a–Staff (Natural Sciences)
Section 6–MWF–2:10-3:00p–Staff (Health & Society

540–3cr–Teaching College Level Composition (Restricted to ENEX 100/101 Teaching Assistants)

Section 1–M–3:10-6:00p–Kathleen Ryan
Section 1–W–3:10-6:00p–Kathleen Ryan
This course provides new UM Composition Program teaching assistants with an introduction to the theories and practices that surround composition pedagogy. Through this course, teaching assistants will able to take up the UM Composition Program’s curriculum with greater knowledge, authority, and agency--as well as the possibility of imaginative and successful classroom teaching. Two guiding principles articulate how this course informs the teaching of first-year composition at Montana. First, we want our students to realize “what composing is and to articulate the role it plays in shaping their intellectual lives” (Crowley, Composition in the University). And secondly, we want our students to understand inquiry as a way of engaging in our composition, the university, and the world. To facilitate such an understanding requires that you develop a teaching praxis, that is, composition teaching theories and practices grounded in study, experience, reflection, and action.

LITERATURE (ENLT)

120L-3crs-Introduction to Critical Interpretation (Writing course for Lower Division)

Section 1-MWF-12:10-1:00p-Gilcrest Section 2-MWF-3:10-4:00p-Staff

121L-3crs-Introduction to Poetry (Writing course for Lower Division)

Section 1-MWF-4:10-5:00p-Jocelyn Siler
Section 80-MWF-3:10-4:00p-Jocelyn Siler-Honors
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-MWF-10:10-11:00a- Rob Browning (Open to Majors in ENGL/PREN)
Section 2-TR-8:10-9:30a-Staff
Section 80-MWF 12:10-1:00p-Rob Browning-Honors (Consent of Honors College required)
This course is a survey of works composed during the first millennium of English literary history. Beginning with Beowulf, we will read our way through a selection of literature representing the Middle Ages, the Renaissance (or early modern period, as we will sometimes consider this and the following two periods), and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. An important aim of the course will be to learn how the authors we read engage with and respond to the salient political, ecclesiastical, economic, and social conditions of their own times. Intrinsic to this project will be our study of the defining features of different literary genres (epic, lyric, discursive prose, drama, and novel) and modes (heroic, tragic, comedic, satiric, pastoral, and romance), and how authors used, adapted, or outright challenged these conventions. Required texts: The Norton Anthology of Literature, volumes A, B, and C; the Norton Critical Edition of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

223L-3crs-British Literature in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Writing course for Lower Division)

Section 1-MWF-10:10-11:00a-Eric Reimer (OPEN TO ENGL/PREN MAJORS ONLY)
Section 2-MWF-9:10-10:00a-Eric Reimer
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, students 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 of 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, which will be drawn from the Norton Anthology of English Literature (eighth edition) and such additional readings as Walter Scott’s short story “The Two Drovers” and Virginia Woolf’s novel, To the Lighthouse.
Section 80-TR-12:40-2:00p-Bob Baker-Honors (Consent of Honors College Required)
Representative texts from Romanticism to the present.

224L-3crs-American Literature to 1865 (Writing course for Lower Division)

Section 1-MWF-8:10-9:30a-Witzling (Open to Majors in ENGL PREN)
Section 2-TR-2:10-3:30p-Witzling
Section 80-MWF-2:10-3:00p-Gilcrest
In this course, we will study significant literary texts from the early part of our nation's 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, westward expansion, 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.

225L-3crs-American Literature Since 1865 (Writing course for Lower Division)

Section 1-TR-9:40-11:00a-David Moore (Open to Majors in ENGL PREN)
Section 2-TR-8:10-9:30a-David Moore
The course looks at a revised canon of American masters of prose and poetry from the Civil War through the twentieth century. We read and compare differing versions of American identity through questions of national and individual purpose, and through historical tensions between American ideals and practices. Dialogues over these questions arise between works by women and people of color such as Edith Eaton, E. Pauline Johnson, Zitkala Sa, Charlotte Gilman, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, or Leslie Silko, and formerly canonical figures such as Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, and William Faulkner. Two broad historical themes, conquest and slavery, interweave with issues of gender in American literature to continue to challenge our ideals, and we will trace how these thinkers negotiate such themes.
Section 3-MWF-11:10-12:00p-Bardet (FIG section)
ENLT 225 covers literature from the Civil War through the twentieth century. We will build up our understanding of literature from this time period by learning about the historical and cultural contexts in which they were published. Therefore, we’ll have to explore such major movements as realism, regionalism, naturalism, modernism, and postmodernism and see how they highlight our interpretation of these literary texts.

301-3crs-Applied Literary Criticism (Writing course for Upper Division) (Prereq or Coreq: 12 credits of lower-division ENLT courses)(Not Open to Majors in PREN)

Section 1-TR-8:10-9:30a-Louise Economides
In this course, we’ll be exploring a wide range of approaches to literary interpretation. Along the way, we’ll consider the history of English as a distinct academic discipline and the evolution of critical theory in the 20th Century and beyond. Some of the issues we’ll explore include whether interpretation should focus on uniquely “literary” aspects of creative texts, the relationship between texts and the “outside” world (literature’s social and/or historical contexts), what it means to be an author as well as a reader of texts, whether texts reflect human psychology and to what degree they can be regarded as “meaningful” in any stable and/or reductive manner. In sum, just what are we doing when we claim to be interpreting a work of literature? Another major focus in this course will be how to use ideas derived critical theory to interpret specific texts. Writing assignments are places to test both your understanding of critical theory and your ability to apply theoretical concepts creatively to interpret literary texts. Many of the concepts we encounter in critical theory may initially seem foreign, cryptic and/or difficult. Students are therefore encouraged to balance reading as a “believer” (in order to first understand a theoretical system) with reading as a “critic” (challenging and/or analyzing concepts once they have been grasped). Asking questions during class discussions will therefore be of paramount importance.
Section 2-MWF-10:10-11:00a-Staff
Section 3-TR-3:40-5:00p-Mike 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: Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction; Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Norton Critical ed., 3rd ed.); Murfin and Ray, The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms; Hacker, A Pocket Style Manual.

320-3crs-Shakespeare (Writing Course for Upper Division)(Prereq: ENLT 301 or consent of instructor) (Not open to Majors in PREN)

Section 1-TR-2:10-3:30p-John Hunt
Section 80-TR-2:10-3:30p-Staff (Consent of Honors College required)

321-3crs-Studies in Major Author (Writing Course for Upper Division) (Prereq: ENLT 301 or consent of instructor) (Not open to Majors in PREN)

Section 2-Fitzgerald-MWF-9:10-10:00a-Bardet
F. Scott Fitzgerald who, at the end of his life, considered himself a failure is today a success. The Great Gatsby sells 800,000 copies a year and his other works, notably a dozen great short stories and Tender Is the Night continue to provide satisfaction to hundreds of thousands of people. This course will take you through the best of his writing and will concentrate on the works that show Fitzgerald's inimitable style, his faultless ear for prose rhythms, his deep thematic and emotional appeal, his growing disillusionment with American society, the destruction of the American dream and his account of the flamboyance and despair of the contemporary wasteland.

322–3crs–Studies in Literary History (Prereq: ENLT 301 or Consent of Instructor) Writing Course Upper Division

Section 1–MWF-11:10-12:00p–John Glendening (Writing Course for Upper Division)
Covering various authors and types of imaginative literature written in eighteenth-century Britain, this course examines connections between individual texts, broad social trends, and literary culture during a century of intellectual ferment and change. The goals for this course are: (1) to gain understanding of literary and cultural trends pertinent to eighteenth-century British literature, including neo-classicism, sensibility, the Gothic, romanticism, the development of the novel, interest in landscape and nature, growth of the middle class, the changing status of women, travel and tourism, imperialism, political and social revolution, and the effects of science and technology; (2) to read and become conversant with a representative sample of significant eighteenth-century poetry, fiction, and drama; (3) to understand the impact of major authors of the period; and (4) to gain skill in discussing and writing about literature. Texts may include the following: Behn, Oroonoko; Pope, Essay on Man and Other Poems; Defoe, Moll Flanders; Sheridan, The Rivals; Sterne, A Sentimental Journey; Walpole, The Castle of Otranto; Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield; Burney, Evelina; Austen, Sense and Sensibility; and readings from a course packet. There will be a midterm, a final exam, and reading quizzes along with three critical essays.

329–3crs–Native American Literature (Same as NAS 329.1)

Section 1B–TR 8:10-9:30a–Angelica Lawson

331–3crs–Voices of the American Renaissance (Prereq: ENLT 224L or 225L and ENLT 301 or consent of instructor) Writing Course Upper Division

Section 1–TR-3:40-5:00p–David Moore
The ante-bellum emergence of a distinctive American literature can be understood as more than an American dialogue with and against external European intellectual masters in the first half of the nineteenth century. An internal dialogue also took place toward defining “America” and “American,” between people of all colors, women and men, wealthy and poor. The now canonical figures such as Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, Thoreau, Melville, and Hawthorne were not infrequently in conversation with African American and Native American voices, with founders of the women’s rights movement, and with other American “others” in the emerging national narrative before the Civil War. Further, those different communities exchanged their own ideas over their own issues. Through readings from a variety of such voices, the course explores some of those internal dialogues on race, class, and gender in the young America, and how those multiple dialogues shaped contemporary social terms for today’s descendents of those diverse groups. A tentative selection of authors includes William Apess, John Rollin Ridge, Margaret Fuller, Ralph W. Emerson, Henry D. Thoreau, Lydia Child, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Rebecca Harding Davis, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Herman Melville.

335–3crs–The American Novel (Prereq: ENLT 224L or 225L) (Prereq or Coreq: ENLT 301) Writing Course Upper Division

Section 1–TR-2:10-3:30p–Thomas Berninghausen
The Contemporary American Road Novel: The journey or quest has been a central motif throughout the history of Western literature as exemplified in The Odyssey, Don Quixote, and Heart of Darkness. In classic American literature the motif is evident in many major works, including Moby Dick, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Huckleberry Finn, and As I Lay Dying. This course will examine this motif in American novels of the last fifty years, from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006).

358–3crs–British Modernism

Section 1–TR 12:40-2:00p–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; Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier; 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 Environment (Prereq: ENLT 224 or 225 and ENLT 301 or Consent of Instructor.) Writing Course Upper Division

Section 80-- (HONORS)–TR-12:40-2:00p–Louise Economides (Consent of Honors College req.)
In this course, we’ll examine wilderness’s historical, contemporary and future relevance within western culture by examining its representation in literature. We’ll also explore debates about the usefulness of wilderness (and/or the preservation of “wild” areas) as a key component of American environmentalism. Along the way, we’ll address the question of whether wilderness is best understood as an actual material state of nature or as a cultural ideal, what critical investments are at stake in wilderness advocacy and the sometimes problematic association of wilderness experience with hegemonic masculinity, misanthropy and/or with anti-modernism. Furthermore, we’ll explore the implications of Thoreau’s claim that “in wildness is the preservation of the world.” Can pragmatic as well as ethical and/or aesthetic arguments be formulated for the need to preserve wilderness in the future, or is the whole idea of wilderness already untenable, needing to be replaced by some other idea of “nature” (neo-pastoralism, for example)? If, according to Bill McKibben, we already live in at an historical moment that marks the “end of nature,” what will the future status of wilderness be? These and other questions will be the focus of our open-ended exploration in this class.

395–3crs–Special Topics

Section 1B–MWF–9:10-10:00a–Shakespeare: Comedy & Tragedy-Stewart Justman (Same as LS295-01)
How Shakespeare understood and at times intermingled comedy and tragedy (the two categories of drama that go back to ancient times), and how he used their elements to forge new genres. Texts: Midsummer Night's Dream; Henry IV (a history with elements of comedy); Hamlet; Othello; Measure for Measure; The Tempest.
Section 2B–MWF–11:10-12:00p–Chaucer & Arab Nights-Stewart Justman (Same as LS395-02)
The philosopher Simone Weil once expressed her amazement that “certain periods almost without material means of communication surpassed ours in the wealth, variety, fertility and vitality of their exchanges of thought over the very widest expanses.” In the case of exchanges between the Islamic and Christian worlds in the later Middle Ages, one has the sense that stories were the more prized, and their circulation the more robust, because of the limited means of passing them. For the purposes of this course the many resemblances among three of the best-loved works of world literature, the Decameron, the Canterbury Tales and the Arabian Nights (each a collection of framed tales) will serve as the principal index of the exchange of story-lore between the Islamic and Christian cultures in medieval times. It is one of the ironies of literary history that stories from the Islamic world should have flowed into Latin Europe, and entered into the making of its fiction, at the same time that the image of Islam itself as a religion of license, violence, and fraud was established in Europe. In the very shadow of the Crusades, and in the face of the Church’s desire “to reduce communication with Muslims to a minimum,” even then Arabic stories entered the very lore and imagination of Christian Europe. This course traces some of the rich literary results of the cultural traffic between hostile civilizations. Texts: Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (in the original Middle English); Anon., Arabian Nights, Haddawy translation; Boccaccio, Decameron, McWilliam translation.
Section 3B–TR–3:10-5:30p–African Cinema-Valentin
Section 4B–TR–12:40-2:00p–Irish Politics-Terry O’Riordain (Same as ENIR 395)
see ENIR 395 below for course description.

421–3crs–Topics in Critical Theory (Prereq: ENLT 301 and six credits in lit. courses numbered 300 or higher) (same as LS 461)

Section 1A: Literature, Media, and the Public Sphere–MWF 2:10-3:00p–Robert Browning
In this course we will examine competing conceptualizations of the public sphere and the roles that literature and print media play in these different accounts. Our starting point will be Jürgen Habermas’s seminal work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962, English trans. 1989), which makes the case that a discursive space opens to people of the middling classes during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. This space, Habermas argues, is populated by “private people come together as a public” who, utilizing their faculties of reason, debate matters of common interest. Preceding this political public sphere (what amounts to the underpinnings of democratic culture), is the notion of a “pure” or “common” humanity, which “evolves from the public sphere in the world of letters.” We will consider and dispute the merits of Habermas’s structural model in its entirety: its account of the bourgeois public sphere’s early-modern rise and, under the impetuses of emergent media technologies and consumer culture, its modern disintegration. Following this first unit we will investigate challenges to Habermas, both in early modern studies (which have attempted to push back the public sphere’s terminus a quo to as early as the sixteenth century) and modern and postmodern studies (which have debated the question of whether a public sphere is a viable category in our own time or, indeed, in any other). Throughout the semester we will examine questions about social inclusiveness and exclusivity and the nature and quality of participation in public discourses. An important resource for this course will be Early English Books Online, which will allow participants to research England’s pamphlet wars of the 1640s, a cultural phenomenon comparable to the internet revolution of our own time. Our reading list for the early modern period may include works by Montaigne, Shakespeare (Coriolanus), Milton (Areopagitica, Eikonoklastes), Lucy Hutchinson, Marchamont Nedham, Hobbes, Locke, Dryden (Aureng-zebe), Thomas Otway (Venice Preserv’d), Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, Swift, Defoe, Lawrence Sterne, Rousseau, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Percy Shelley. We’ll also read Foucault, Bourdieu, Luhman, Laclau, Derrida, David Warner, Joad Raymond, and Sharon Achinstein. 21st-century literature and other texts (including internet forums) will be selected by the class. Assignments: three or more very short essays, a research paper, and a class presentation.
Section 2A: The Death (and Birth) of the Subject)–MWF 9:10-10:00a–David Witzling
The presumed death or de-centering of the subject has cleared a space for many of the central projects of contemporary critical theory. This subject – presumably a “he” – was an autonomous individual defined by the possession of an intellect lodged in the mind rather than the body. He was a reflection of the European Enlightenment and its explanations of the nature of selfhood and social organization, explanations that are still the foundations of the state, the law, and the economy of liberal democracies such as the United States. When poststructuralists and other critics of culture have proven enlightenment concepts such as the mind/body split and the autonomy of the individual to be false, they have challenged basic precepts of liberal democracy as well as of international relations. Such precepts, however, are still valued and assumed to be true by many. These precepts continue to underlie national traditions and they also play a central role in processes of legal, economic, and cultural globalization. Consequently, those of us interested in the anti-enlightenment projects of recent theory must consider whether the subject ever really died and, if he did, whether that death was entirely a good thing.
In order to understand what is at stake politically, socially, and aesthetically in critiques of liberal and enlightened selfhood, participants in this seminar will revisit the subject’s purported death in recent theory as well as its birth in the seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries. During the first half of the course, readings of texts central to the poststructuralist canon will be paired with some of the enlightenment texts they critique and supposedly replace. For example, readings of Derrida and de Man will be paired with readings of Rousseau and readings of Nietzsche and Foucault will be paired with readings of Descartes. Readings in the second half of the course will include examples of postcolonial theory (Spivak, Bhabha) and gender studies (Butler) that reiterate poststructuralism’s critique of the subject in terms of particular experiences of social difference. Participants will focus on the ways in which these readings address contemporary iterations of liberal democracy. The second half of the course will also involve the study of two American novels: Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Morrison’s Beloved. These novels demonstrate the ways in which the subject and its implicit expression of the ideals of liberal democracy have repeatedly died and been reborn in the cultural traditions of the United States.

429–3crs–Studies in Native American Autobiography (Prereq: ENLT 301 or ENLT/NAS 329, or consent of instructor) (Same as NAS 410L)

Section 1B–MW–2:10-3:30p–Shanley
Since first contact with Indigenous Americans, Europeans have been fascinated by the cultural differences between themselves and Native peoples. Within European American thought, the symbol of "the Indian" has known a wide range of applications--from being seen as cultural "others" or early European selves. Both the European fascination with Native Americans and Native Americans' need to tell "their side of the story" have given rise to an immense body of Native American "autobiographies," often written in collaboration with European Americans. In this course we will survey a geographical and historical variety of Native American autobiographies and life stories, ranging from texts produced entirely by American Indians to texts, which have undergone extreme alteration from the telling of the tale to the production of the book by or through its non-Indian editor. We will consider a wide range of issues raised by the texts--e.g., what is autobiography? What are Native attitudes toward the natural world, the roles of men and women in indigenous societies, and in colonial and (post)colonial circumstances? The course will include a brief overview of autobiographical theory and some background in Native American history and literature.

430–3crs–Studies in Comparative Literature (Prereq. ENLT 301 and 6 credits in lit. numbered 300 or higher or Consent of Instructor) (Writing Course for Upper Division–NOT OPEN TO PREN MAJORS) (Same as MCLG 455 & LS 455)

Section 1–Contemporary Poetry-TR–2:10-3:30p–Robert Baker
This course will be a survey of American poetry from 1945 through the present. It’s impossible to cover this many-sided sixty-year period in a mere fifteen weeks. Yet the impossible is said to be a source of wonder. So we will do our best, reading influential poets from three generations, beginning with a few poets who published their first major books in the forties and fifties, then turning to a few poets who became prominent in the sixties and seventies, and finally turning to a few “baby boomer” poets who have published outstanding books over the last twenty or twenty-five years. Our readings will include at least the following: Gwendolyn Brooks, Blacks; Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems; Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems; Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language; John Ashbery, Three Poems and Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror; Charles Bernstein, Controlling Interests or With Strings; C.D. Wright, Deepstep Come Shining; Thylias Moss, Tokyo Butter.
Section 2–Dante-TR–11:10-12:30p–John Hunt
A fairly extensive and also intensive study of one of the handful of truly monumental poets in world literature. Primary texts for this class will be (in order) selected lyric poems by Provencal troubadours and their Italian imitators, Dante’s La vita nuova, the first half of Virgil’s Aeneid, all three parts of The Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso), and a selection from Bernard of Clairvaux’s On Loving God. There will also be many short assignments of secondary reading: explanatory notes, criticism, and background sources. All reading and discussion of Dante’s works will be conducted in English, but we will use dual-language texts and pay frequent attention to Italian terms and the sound of the Italian verse, and when we reach the Comedy, I will schedule one or two optional class meetings for students who want to try pronouncing Dante’s Italian and doing some simple translation. Two papers and two exams.

500–3crs–Intro to Graduate Studies (Cannot be taken in lieu of required seminars in English. Open to Majors in ENGL and class level of Graduate)

Section 1–R–3:10-6:00p–Louise Economides
This course will provide students with an orientation to graduate study and to professionalism within the field of literary study. Topics that will be addressed include honing research skills, crafting analytical papers, preparing seminar and conference presentations and planning/drafting of theses. Intensive study of literary and cultural theory is also a key component of the class.

520–3crs–Seminar in British Literature (Open to graduate students in CRWR, ENGL, EVST, LING)

Section 2–Shakespeare-R–7:10-10:00p–Casey Charles
Focusing on the implications of Ben Jonson’s famous statement that Shakespeare was “not for an age, but all time,” this course hopes to join the current presentist debate in Shakespeare studies by asking how we can make the most canonical writer in literary history relevant to current cultural concerns. While remaining faithful to the calls of historicism, the aesthetics of Shakespeare’s poetics, and the theatrical conventions of Renaissance drama, this course looks to selected sonnets and plays (As You Like It, Hamlet, Lear, Measure for Measure, and Cymbeline) to explore ways to make Shakespeare real through an application of different contemporary frameworks—performance studies, queer theory, critical legal studies, and film adaptation. Students will write a research paper and give a presentation.

521–3crs–Seminar in American Literature (Open to graduate students in CRWR, ENLG, EVST, LING, HIST)

Section 1–The Elemental West–T-7:10-10:00p–Nancy Cook
In this course we will examine western American literature from the ground up, so to speak. What do western texts look like when viewed from the perspective of the elements—water, air, fire, and earth? How do the elements determine or inflect narrative, character, and ethical substance of the text? What can this perspective tell us about the way we inhabit Western spaces? About our animal selves? Literary texts will be drawn from among works by the following 20th and 21st –century authors: Stegner, McNickle, Austin, LeGuin, Barr, Butler, Kesey, Williams, Meloy, Owens, Welch, Silko, Dillard, Walker, Cather, Hammett, Didion, Boyle, Galvin, McPhee, Reiser, Kittredge, Blew, Earling, Lewis and Clark, Maclean, Abbey. For theoretical and methodological frameworks, we’ll draw from ecocriticism and cultural geography.

522–3crs–Seminar in Comparative Literature (Open to graduate students in CRWR, ENGL, EVST, FLL, LING. Same as FLLG 522)

Section 1B–Romantic Dialogue:Germ/Fren–MWF–2:10-3:00p–Ametsbichler
The subtitle for this course is “He Said / She Said: Literary Liaisons in 19th-Century German and French Romanticism. In this course, we look at the gender-based dialogue as portrayed in works by famous writers during the Romantic era in Europe. We begin with Wolfgang von Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), as an example of Sturm und Drang, the German literary movement that launched European Romanticism. This epistolary novella sets the tone for the gender-based dialogues that follow. We will examine the portrayal of the dialogue between the sexes in literary works by female and male authors, especially in works by author “pairs”; for example, the readings include: Friedrich Schlegel (Lucinde [1799]) and Dorothea Mendelssohn Veit Schlegel (Florentin [1801]); Germaine de Staël (Corinne, or Italy [1807] and Benjamin Constant (Adolphe [1816]); Achim von Arnim (The Mad Invalid of Fort Ratenneau [1818]) and Bettina von Arnim (Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child [1835]); and Alfred de Musset (The Confession of a Child of the Century [1836]) and George Sand (She and He [1859]). In addition, we will examine Romantic theory as proposed by the Romantics themselves as a backdrop for these works and for contemporary feminist approaches to them.
Section 2A–The Play of the Unsaid–M–7:00-10:00p–Christopher Knight
The seminar will focus upon the trope of apophasis as evidenced by major modern (Henry James through Jacques Derrida) texts, including James’s “The Middle Years,” Joyce’s “The Dead,” Cézanne’s late canvases, Rilke’s Letters on Paul Cézanne, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, Hemingway’s In Our Time, Heidegger’s “What Is Philosophy?’, Eliot’s Four Quartets, Rothko’s late canvases, Gaddis’s The Recognitions (Part I), Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, Sontag’s The Aesthetics of Silence, Kermode’s The Genesis of Secrecy, Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower, Kieslowski’s The Double Life of Veronique and Derrida’s “How to Avoid Speaking.”
Section 3A–Salman Rushdie–W–6:10-9:00p–Eric Reimer
Indian? Pakistani? Englishman? American? Defying any simple national categories, Salman Rushdie is one of contemporary fiction’s most international writers—he has, in fact, declared himself to be a “cultural mongrel” and a “bastard child of history.” His work has both made the category of British fiction more capacious and complicated and come to represent the “new” novel: postcolonial, decentered, transnational, interlingual, cross-cultural. It has also been celebrated for its historical understanding, its intellectual and linguistic playfulness, and its promotion of border-crossings, both literal and figurative. In this course, we’ll read at least four of Rushdie’s major novels—-including Midnight’s Children (1980), The Satanic Verses (1988), Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), and The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995)—-as well as a selection of his short stories and essays. We’ll also consider some of Rushdie’s primary influences (e.g., The Arabian Nights, The Wizard of Oz, the films of Satyajit Ray, etc.), as well as read theoretical and contextual material by such writers as Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall, and Pico Iyer. Especially given the ongoing conflict between the West and militant Islam, we will want to reexamine the issues surrounding Rushdie’s most troubling claim to fame: the fatwa and controversy that followed the publication of The Satanic Verses. More broadly, though, our goal will be to consider such notions, metaphors, and tropes as hybridity, the figure of the migrant, borders and frontiers, sectarianism, history as story, the idea of Islam, multiculturalism, culture and the global village, etc. We will also, of course, not fail to relish Rushdie’s novels for the endlessly inventive, brilliant page-turners that they often are.

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

ENGLISH TEACHING (ENT)

439–3crs–Studies in Young Adult Literature

Section 1–M–4:10-7:00p–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.

440–3crs–Teaching Writing (Prereq: C&I 303, Senior Standing and Consent of Instructor)

Section 1–TR–2:10-3:30p–Heather Bruce

441–3crs–Teaching Reading and Literature (Prereq: ENT 439, Admission to Teacher Education and Consent of Instructor)

Section 1–T–4:10-7:00p–Beverly Chin
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.

544–3crs–Creative Drama in English Class (Prereq: Teaching experiences or senior standing 3.0 GPA and petition with consent of instructor)

Section 1–W–5:10-8:00p–Beverly Chin
Designing, teaching and evaluating creative drama in the English language arts classroom. Emphasis on using creative drama as a learning skill to teach literature and language.

551–3crs–Writing the Professional Paper (Consent of Instructor Required)

Section 1–T–5:10-8:00p–Heather Bruce

FILM OPTION (ENFM)

180–3crs–Introduction to Film

Section 1–TR–8:10-10:00a–Sean O’Brien
The goals of this course are to heighten students’ appreciation of the art of filmmaking and to sharpen each’s critical eye. We will compare various approaches to film production, and learn how to assess both the aesthetic and political dimensions of the films shown in class. Requirements include quizzes, film review essays, and a final exam.

325–3crs–History of Film

Section 1–TR–3:40-6:00p–Phil Fandozzi
A representative survey of the history of film from the late 19th century to the present. Selected films will represent major developments, genres, and directors with emphasis on historical context and general significance. The objective is to engender understanding and appreciation of this history as demonstrated by the ability to analyze and critical assess its historical and cinematic significance.

IRISH STUDIES (ENIR)

101–3crs–Elementary Irish Language I

Section 1–TR–4:10-5:30p–Terry O’Riordain
Section 2–TR–2:10-3:10p–Staff

103–3crs–Elementary Irish Language III

Section 1–TR–8:10-9:30a–Terry O’Riordain

395–3crs–Irish Politics and Literature

Section 1–TR–12:40-2:00p–Terry O’Riordain
Irish Literature and Irish Politics: From Geoffrey Keating to Pádraig Pearse: Irish literature has always been closely allied to Irish politics and nowhere is this more clearly enunciated than in the writings of Geoffrey Keating and Pádraig Pearse, the two great modern proponents of Gaelic Ireland. Both emerged in different periods of profound political, cultural and social change to give voice to a vision of Ireland founded on Gaelic culture. In his monumental text Foras Feasa ar Eirinn written in the 17th century, Keating designs a new ideological framework based on the twin notions of faith and fatherland that aims to preserve Irish Gaelic culture and the Catholic faith in the context of English and Protestant hegemony. His writings provide students with a greater understanding of Irish political history and a finer appreciation of the immense corpus of Jacobite poetry composed in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Pádraig Pearse emerges in the latter stages of the 19th century as the great spokesman and philosopher of the Irish Gaelic Revival. Like Keating, his objective was cultural autonomy not political independence, yet the pursuit of this objective would lead him into closer communion with political nationalism and ultimately down the road to bloody rebellion. Students will read Pearse’s short stories, poetry and plays and follow the author’s intellectual and ideological movement away from the heroes of Ireland’s past to a growing fascination with Christ’s sacrificial act and the belief that only the blood of martyrs could renew the Fenian spirit and redeem the soul of the nation. It is the blood of the martyr that will sublimate and elevate Pearse’s vision above all others to where it becomes the vision that shapes a new Ireland. As students will learn, it is in this context that the 1916 Rising and the subsequent War of Independence make sense and it is through the writings of Pearse that they will come to know and understand the dynamics of Irish nationalism down to the present day.

LINGUISTICS (ENLI)

465–3crs–Structures & History of English

Section 1A–R–6:10-9:00p–Tull