Spring 2005

ENCR - Creative Writing | ENEX - Expository Writing |
ENLT - Literature | ENT - English Teaching

CREATIVE WRITING (ENCR)

210A: Introduction to Creative Writing: Fiction (3 cr)

Section 1-TR-11:10-12:30p-Staff
Section 2-TR-12:40-2:00p-Staff
Section 3-TR-2:10-3:30p-Kate Gadbow (ENGL/PREN majors only)
Section 4-TR-2:10-3:30p-Robert Stubblefield

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: Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry (3 cr)

Section 1-TR-12:40-2:00p-Greg Pape (Open to ENGL/PREN majors only)
Section 2-TR-11:10-12:30p-Staff
Section 3-TR-3:40-5:00p-Staff

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: Creative Writing: Fiction (3 cr; consent of instructor required)

Section 1-TR-3:40-5:00p-Dee McNamer
This is a fiction-writing course for undergraduates who have successfully completed ENCR 210, 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 stories and one revision will be discussed in class, and class participants will prepare written critiques of the work discussed. Exercises will address technical aspects of writing fiction. Outside reading will be required.
Section 2-TR-12:40-2:00p-Debra Earling
This is an intermediate fiction-writing workshop. Students will be expected to finish 3 or 4 substantial stories for the course. Although some outside material will be considered, the primary emphasis will be analysis and discussion of student work. Students are expected to have done promising work in ENCR 210.

311: Creative Writing: Poetry (3 cr; consent of instructor required)

Section 1-TR-12:40-2:00p-Karen Volkman
This creative writing course 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. Students will write poems in the forms discussed as well as exploring a form-type or formal concern in a short final paper.
Section 2-W-12:10-3:00p-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. Be prepared to do imitations; some memorization may also be required.

410: Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction (3 cr; consent of instructor required)

Section 1-R-3:40-5:00p-Brady Udall (Kittredge Visiting Writer)
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: Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry (3 cr; consent of instructor required)

Section 1-R-3:40-6:30p-Greg Pape
An advanced writing workshop involving critical analysis of students' work-in-progress, as well as reading and discussion of poems by "established" poets. Discussions will focus on structure and stylistic refinements, with emphasis on revision. Different techniques, schools and poetic voices will be encouraged. Frequent individual conferences.

412: Creative Writing Non-Fiction (3 cr; ENCR 310 and consent of instructor)

Section 1-TR-2:10-3:30p-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.

496: Independent Study (1-3 cr; consent of instructor and department chair required)

510: Fiction Workshop (3 cr; consent of instructor required)

Section 1-R-3:40-6:30p-Debra Earling
Students will read and write short stories, engage in discussions about craft, and subject themselves to a few experimental exercises.
Section 2-T-3:40-6:30p-Brady Udall (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.

511: Poetry Workshop (3 cr; consent of instructor required)

Section 1-M-6:10-9:00p and W 3:10-6:00p-Emily Wilson (Hugo Writer-in-Residence); Class meets first half of the semester (1/24/05-3/18/05)
An advanced poetry workshop involving critical analysis of student work, as well as reading and discussion of poems by established poets. This is an intensive class meeting twice weekly for the first half of the semester. We will focus on students' poems with an eye to practical issues in poetics (image, syntax, diction, form, etc.) and strategies for revision. Limited to graduate students in the M.F.A. program.
Section 2-W-6:10-9:00p-Karen Volkman
This workshop emphasizes intensive reading, discussion, and critique, as well as occasional exercises. Along with students' weekly writing, we will discuss a number of recent books of poetry, considering a range of lyric gestures, deformations of convention, music and movement, and the poetic possibilities (and perplexities) they imply.

512: Nonfiction Workshop (3 cr; consent of instructor required)

Section 1-M-6:00-9:00p-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: Techniques of Fiction: Time and Trouble (3 cr; consent of instructor required)

Section 1-W-7:10-10:00p-Deirdre McNamer
This course, for M.F.A. students in both fiction and nonfiction, will focus on two key aspects of writing compelling prose: managing time and creating the sort of trouble-or tension-that encourages readers to invest in the future of a given narrative i.e. staying with it.
In investigating various time strategies, we will consider the conronological narrative and its rearrangements; notions of completeness; tricks of condensation; timed-release strategies; available rhythms; seductive languor, seductive speed.
In investigating narrative tension, we will read and discuss models for creating it at every level, from the nervous-making word to the overall structure of the piece.
Students will also write: 1) a story or essay 2) a paper that analyzes time and tension management in that work and proposes alternate approaches and, 3) a rewrite of the original story or essay in which those alternates are incorporated.

515: Traditional Prosody (3 cr; consent of instructor required)

Section 1-W-12:10-3:00p-Greg Pape
Intensive practice and readings in prosodic and other poetic techniques.

516: Topics in Creative Writing (3 cr; consent of instructor required)

Section 1-M-6:10-9:00p and W 3:10-6:00p-Melissa Kwasny; class meets the second half of the semester (3/28/05-5/13/05)
Which one of us, in his moments of ambition, has not dreamed of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical, without rhythm and without rhyme, supple enough and rugged enough to adapt itself to the lyrical impulses of the soul, the undulations of reverie, the jibes of consciousness?
Charles Baudelaire, Preface to Paris Spleen
This literature and writing workshop will examine, infiltrate, and experiment with the borders between fiction and poetry. We will be looking at instances of fiction that are decidedly experimental in that they do not rely on conventional plot and characterization and the trope of the omniscient narrator. We will look at poems that tell stories, and we will analyze the techniques they use to keep the language moving forward. We will look at the cross-breeds, the hybrids, the genres that do not respect the traditional boundaries between poetry and fiction. Are the boundaries more fluid than we think? The class will consist of reading assignments and writing exercises in the narrative poem, the prose poem, and various elements of poetic prose such as the letter, the parable, the linked vignette as well as various techniques used in what has come to be called poetic prose. Reading list includes Paris Spleen by Charles Baudelaire, Selected Poems Rene Char, Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein, Ava by Carole Maso, The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald and Letters on Cezanne by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Section 2-Studies in Voicing: Apostrophe--R-3:40-6:30p-Joanna Klink
In this course we will consider one issue in the history of poetics related to voicing: apostrophe. How do acts of address shape lyric poems? What, exactly, constitutes a gesture of address? What force does apostrophe carry as a trope, as a dramatic event? How do poets modulate their voices as the distance from a "you" narrows or widens, or as a "you" changes over the course of a poem? Using Buber's I and Thou as an initial guide, we will examine several types of apostrophes: prayers, love poems, Romantic poems that turn to nature, and poems that fit none of these categories precisely but seem to be moved by a deep, dialogic impulse. To better understand the range of expressive possibilities (and technical strategies) involved in lyric address, we will devote the semester to reading, imitating, and otherwise inhabiting the dialogue-driven voices of Herbert, Wordsworth, Keats, Hopkins, Rilke, Montale, H.D., Crane, Roethke, Ashbery, and Celan, as well as various contemporary poets. Limited to graduate students in the M.F.A. program.

596: Graduate Independent Study (1-3 cr; consent of instructor and graduate chair required)

599: Thesis (1-12 cr; ARRANGE: Staff)

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: 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.

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.

398: Cooperative Educational Experience (1-12 cr; ARRANGE: Chris Knight; Prerequisite: consent of department chair and Cooperative Education Office)

540: Teaching College Level Composition (1 cr, restricted to ENEX 100/101 TAs)

Section 1-M-3:10-5:00p-Eric Reimer
Section 2-M-3:10-5:00p-David Gilcrest
Section 3-M-3:10-5:00p-Joseph Campana

LITERATURE (ENLT)

120: Introduction to Critical Interpretation (3 cr; lower division writing course)

Section 1-MWF-11:10-12:00p-Joseph Campana
Section 2-MWF-9:10-10:00a-Staff (CLOSED PENDING FUNDING)
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.

121: Introduction to Poetry (3 cr; lower division writing course)

Section 1-TR-11:10-12:30p-David Gilcrest
Section 2-MWF-10:10-11:00a-David Gilcrest
An introduction to the techniques of reading and writing about poetry with emphasis on the lyric and other shorter forms.

222: British Literature Through the 18th Century (3 cr)

Section 1-MWF-9:10-10:00a-John Glendening (Open to ENGL/PREN majors only)
Section 2-MWF-10:10-11:00a-John Glendening
A survey of British literary authors, works, periods, and rends from the Middle Ages through the eighteenth century, with particular attention given to the connection between texts and cultural history. This course is designed to provide a basis for understanding our literary heritage and for further reading. Because of the large amount of reading material and topics to be covered, this will be primarily a lecture course, but questions will be welcomed. There will be a midterm examination, a final exam, and occasional pop quizzes; students will write three critical essays.
Texts: Damrosch, et al., The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Compact Edition, Vol. A; Hacker, A Pocket Style Manual; Murfin, The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms.

223: British Literature in the 19th and 20th Centuries (3 cr; lower division writing course)

Section 1-TR--11:10-12:30p-Louise Economides (Open to ENGL/PREN majors only)
Section 2-TR-2:10-3:30p-Robert Baker
Representative texts from Romanticism to the present.
Section 3-TR-2:10-3:30p-Louise Economides
The 19th and 20th Centuries were periods of profound and increasingly accelerated social change in Britain and in the west more generally. In this course, we will examine how British Literature reflects the exciting (and often traumatic) unfolding of modernity, from the Romantic period right up to the postmodern era. We'll be focusing on how the romantics initiated revolutionary social ideas such as "universal" human rights, then explore ways such concepts influenced later 19th-century reform movements. In the 20th-Century, we'll consider the crisis in Romantic ideology as reflected in modernism and postmodernism, including the deconstruction of universal notions of selfhood in the work of writers influenced by psychoanalytical, feminist and postcolonial theory.
We'll conclude the course by asking to what extent we live in a post-romantic era today, and (if so) what distinguishes postmodernism from modernism. Throughout the course we'll discuss how major aesthetic concepts (including the sublime, the gothic, social realism, the avant-garde, surrealism, pastiche) reflect the broader social developments at work in both centuries.
Texts: Abrams, M.H. ed., Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 2 (7th edition); Bronte, Charlotte, Jane Eyre (Norton Critical text, 3rd edition); Rhys, Jean, Wide Sargasso Sea (Norton Critical text); Stoppard, Tom, Arcadia (Faber & Faber text).

224: American Literature to 1865 (3 cr; lower division writing course)

Section 1-TR-9:40-11:00a-Christopher Knight (Open to ENGL/PREN majors only)
Section 80 (Honors)-TR-12:40-2:00p-Christopher Knight (Consent of Davidson Honors college required)
Representative texts from the pre-colonial period through the Civil War.

225: American Literature Since 1865 (3 cr; lower division writing course)

Section 1-TR-12:40-2:00p-Lynn Itagaki (Open to ENGL/PREN majors only)
Section 2-TR-9:40-11:00a-Lynn Itagaki
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. Strengthening knowledge of literary interpretation and analysis of the principal forms of literature (poetry, prose, fiction, and drama), 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.

227: Film as Lit, Lit as Film (3 cr; same as LS 227)

Section 1-TR-3:40-5:30p-Phil Fandozzi
In this course we will study the relationship between literature and its filmic adaptations. We will discuss their respective strengths and weaknesses in terms of character development, narrative techniques, cognitive and emotional impact. Readings will include a short text on literature and film writing/reading approaches, and a number of novels/short stories which have been adapted into film.

301: Applied Literary Criticism (Pre- or Co-requisitie: 12 credits of lower division ENLT courses; upper division writing course; not open to PREN majors)

Section 1-MWF-9:10-10:00a-Kathleen Kane
Section 2-MWF-10:10-11:00a-Kathleen Kane
Anatomizing The Composite Body of Literary Theory
In this introductory course in literary and cultural theory, we will attempt to explore representative schools of and issues in contemporary criticism. We will be working, therefore, to build an analytic and critical vocabulary for the activity of reading a variety of texts from the canons of literary criticism. However, in addition to this "first-principles" objective, we will also attempt to engage with such complexities of current theoretical debate as "the question of the author," the reconciliation of form and content, the agon of canon formation and canon busting, and, finally, with the crucial issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Throughout the course we will be moving toward our current early twenty-first century moment in which the range and scope of the labor of the literary critic seems-in light of the rise of a host of non-traditional representational and narrative forms-seems to be expanding.
The course will culminate in an 8 week practicum involving consideration of the multiply incarnated cultural text of Frankenstein: Mary Shelley's novel, James Whale's films, Blade Runner's monsters, and other contemporary avatars.
Texts: Nealon, Jeffery and Susan S. Giroux, The Theory Toolbox; Richter, David, Falling Into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature; Wollstonecroft-Shelley, Frankenstein ( ed. Hunter); Whale, James, Frankenstein (VHS); Brooks, Mel, Young Frankenstein; Scott, R, Blade Runner; Condon, Bill, Gods and Monsters.

Section 80 (Honors)-TR-11:10-12:30p-Eric Reimer (Consent of Davidson Honors College required)
This course serves as a rigorous introduction to the critical "schools" and movements that have most influenced contemporary literary studies. In the hope of demystifying "high theory," we will both read seminal works of literary theory and test their merits and analytical methods by applying them to various texts. As you develop a working understanding of critical theory and practice, you will become attuned to issues of gender, race, class, ideology, ethnicity, power, language, textuality, and canonicity, and to the ways in which these issues are shaping the field of literary studies.
Our theoretical texts will be drawn from the Patricia Waugh/Philip Rice anthology, Modern Literary Theory: A Reader. The balance of the reading list will include Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Nadine Gordimer's July's People, Michelle Cliff's No Telephone to Heaven, Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring, and various short essays and poems. The class will conclude with a mock conference dealing with theoretical perspectives on Tolkien's novel, which you will read throughout the semester.

320: Shakespeare (3 crs; Prerequisite: ENLT 301 or consent of instructor; upper division writing course; not open to PREN majors)

Section 1-TR-11:10-12:30p-Robert Pack
Section 80-HONORS-TR-2:10-3:30p-John Hunt

323: Studies in Literary Forms (3 crs; Prerequisite: ENLT 301 or consent of instructor; same as LS 323)

Section 1-Canadian Novel-MWF-1:10-2:00p-Brady Harrison

English 323 examines a limited number of outstanding Canadian novels, stories, poems, and films in their historical, cultural, and especially literary contexts. Beginning with such acclaimed early twentieth century writers and poets such as Ethel Wilson, Morley Callaghan, and Sinclair Ross, the course will quickly progress to the 1960s and 70s, the era when Canadian writing began to be taken seriously both at home and abroad. Focusing in particular on the work of Margaret Atwood, Margaret Laurence, Alistair MacLeod, Michael Ondaatje, and other major figures, we'll sound the complexities of founding a "national literature" in such a vast and culturally diverse (commonwealth/postcolonial) nation, explore the importance of region, history, race, gender, and more in Canadian letters, and attempt to identify what makes Canadian literature-if such a thing were possible-distinctly Canadian. As the course proceeds, we'll also have opportunities to study Canadian history and culture, and to apply different critical theories to the primary texts. The course aims to deepen your sense of Canadian literary history and to deepen your interpretative skills.
Texts (subject to revision): Atwood, Margaret, The Journals of Susanna Moodie; Atwood, Surfacing; Atwood, Margaret and Robert Weaver, The New Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories; Geddes, Gary. 15 Canadian Poets X 3; Laurence, Margaret. The Diviners; MacLeod, Alistair, No Great Mischief; Ondaatje, Michael. The English Patient.
Section 2-Fantasy Literature--MWF-9:10-10:00a-Michael McClintock
We could, of course, begin with Genesis and The Iliad, but that defensible possibility only indicates how amorphous fantasy regarded as a genre is. More pragmatically, we may regard it as a publishing category, observe its categorical derivation from the Gothic romance, the fairy tale, the ghost story, and the uncanny, and study some of the major subcategories that have developed since the late Victorian period (the Victorians, no less than us, having had ample motivation to fantasize). Two preliminary examinations and a final examination.
Texts: Barrie, Peter Pan; Beagle, The Last Unicorn; Blish, Black Easter; Gaiman, American Gods; Garner, The Owl Service; Leiber, Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness; Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness; Swanwick, The Iron Dragon's Daughter; Tolkien, The Tolkien Reader.

325: Studies in Literature and Other Disciplines (Prerequisites: nine credits in ENLT or LS or consent of instructor; same as LS 356 and EVST 395)

Section 1-Literature and Music-TR-2:10-3:30p-Eric Reimer
Although "literature and music" has yet to find its footing as an exact mode of inquiry, this course will explore the intuition and the evidence that the two arts meet in significant ways. Part of the struggle of this course will be in determining how we can talk about the intersections without falling into "impressionist twaddle," and we're certain to meet with both rewards and frustrations as we do so. Mindful that music was of special importance to the Romantics, we will begin the course by examining some of the great odes in the context of Walter Pater's famous claim that "all art constantly aspires to the condition of music." The balance of the course will find us traversing an eclectic but exciting reading list with the goal of assessing how music operates as a structuring device, as a metaphor, and as a guiding aesthetic principle in works of poetry and fiction. In addition to various theoretical readings, we'll read Joyce's "The Dead," Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and The Waves, Langston Hughes's poetry, Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet. The musical contexts will find us visiting the classical, blues, jazz, folk, and popular music traditions, a trajectory that will essentially take us from sonata-allegro form all the way to the texts of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, U2 and other artists.
Section 80-Visions of Nature (Honors)-TR-11:10-12:30p-Robert Pack (same as LS 356.80 and EVST 395.80)
This course will include both the reading and writing of poetry about the natural world, though students may also propose particular writing projects that are based on research about some environmental issue. Although most of the assigned reading will focus on lyrical, narrative, and dramatic poetry, particularly the work of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Hopkins, Frost, and Roethke, we will also read some Mill, Darwin, Thoreau, and McKibbon to provide theoretical background for our discussions. The workshop aspect of the course will involve students discussing each other's written work as well as editorial commentary from the instructor.

335: The American Novel (3 cr; Prerequisite: ENLT 224L or 225L and prereq. or coreq.: ENLT 301)

Section 1-MWF-12:10-1:00p-Brady Harrison
English 335 examines a limited number of extraordinary American novels in their historical, cultural, and especially literary contexts. We'll explore literary movements such as romanticism, realism, regionalism, naturalism, modernism, and postmodernism, and trace the lineages and disjunctions between these movements. As the course progresses, we'll also have opportunities to discuss different critical theories and apply them to the primary texts. The course aims to deepen your sense of American literary history and to deepen your interpretative skills.
Texts (subject to revision): Davis, Rebecca Harding, Life in the Iron-Mills; Ellison, Ralph, Invisible Man; Erdrich, Louise, Love Medicine; Hemingway, Ernest, The Sun Also Rises; Melville, Herman, Moby Dick; Morrison, Toni,Jazz; O'Brien, Tim, Going After Cacciato.

338: Montana Writers (3 cr; Prerequisite: ENLT 301 or consent of instructor)

Section 1-TR-8:10-9:30a-David Moore
Examination of poems, stories, and novels by or about Montanans and the treatment and representation of race, place, class, gender, sexuality, and identity in Montana. Exploration of the myths and realities of Montana and the American West.

350: Chaucer (3 crs)

Section 1-MWF-9:10-10:00p-Ashby Kinch
As spy, soldier, diplomat, tax officer, minister of the King's works, and Member of Parliament, Chaucer accumulated an incredible breadth and diversity of social experience, which he shaped into one of the great works of social imagination: The Canterbury Tales. These diverse identities relate directly to Chaucer's principal attributes as a poet: his famously capacious intellect, his linguistic complexity, his ear for dialect, and his interest in the shared anxieties that simultaneously draw us together and pull us apart. This course will explore the cultural context from which Chaucer emerged to define a new English literary voice in a work that simultaneously synthesizes the major genres of medieval literature that influenced this capacious intellect and announces a new beginning. First, we will become comfortable with Chaucer's Middle English through a close reading of the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. As we do so, we will navigate the available sources of information about Chaucer's life, allowing students to come to their own conclusions about Chaucer's "character," before we tackle selected Canterbury Tales.

357: Victorian Literature and Culture (3 cr)

Section 1-MWF-1:10-2:00p-John Glendening
The goal of this course is to understand how British nineteenth-century and culture inform Victorian literature by making connections between texts and such factors as political reform, class structure, capitalism, industrial and agricultural changes, developments in science and technology, urban growth, imperialism, religious faith and skepticism, and changing understandings of gender.
Texts: Altick, Victorian People and Ideas; Christ and Ford, The Victorian Age: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2B, Seventh Edition; Dickens, Great Expectations; Wells, The Time Machine.

There will be midterm and final examinations as well as pop reading quizzes, and students will turn in three critical essays during the course of the semester.

395: Special Topics (3 cr; same as LS/WS 395)

Section 1-Medieval Women--R-3:10-6:00p-Joanne Charbonneau

398: Cooperative Education Experience (1-12 cr; Prerequisite: consent of department)

420: History of Criticism and Theory (3 cr; Prerequisite: ENLT 301 and six credits in literature courses numbered 300 or higher or consent of instructor; same as LS 460).

Section 1-MWF-11:10-12:00p-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. Short papers, probably a presentation, and a research paper. Text: Adams and Searle, Critical Theory Since Plato (3rd ed.).

421: Topics in Critical Theory (3 cr; Prerequisite: ENLT 301 and six credits in literature courses numbered 300 or higher or consent of instructor; same as LS 461)

Section 1-The Question of Modernity-TR-11:10-12:30p-Robert Baker
This course will be an introduction to the theories of modernity developed in two different but related fields of twentieth-century thought: first, the critical theory of the Frankfurt School tradition, and second, the world-systems analysis first developed by Immanuel Wallerstein.
We will spend the first ten weeks of the course studying a series of thinkers in the Frankfurt School tradition: Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Jürgen Habermas, J. M. Bernstein, and Gillian Rose. This tradition of thought, while it has varied a good deal over three generations, has generally involved both an Hegelian reading of Marx and an unfolding of this Hegelian Marx in the light of Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, and (after the first generation) many others. But Habermas has broken with this sort of Hegelian Marxism in substantive ways.
We will spend the last five weeks of the course studying a few prominent thinkers in the field of world-systems theory: Immanuel Wallerstein, the founder of this field, as well as Samir Amin and Enrique Dussel. This type of theory involves a general account of historical systems and, in particular, an interpretation of modernity that draws on Marx in constructing a narrative of global history from the late fifteenth century through the present.
Our guiding question in the course will be the question of modernity. What do we mean when we speak of a "modern" society as distinct from a "traditional" or "pre-modern" society? Is modernity shaped primarily by an extended religious or metaphysical crisis, by what has been called the process of secularization or the death of God? Or, to say the same thing from another angle, is modernity shaped primarily by a new mathematical science, a new conception of reason, a gradual "disenchantment of nature," and a general project of "conquering nature" in order to build a free and prosperous society? Or, rather, is modernity characterized above all by a new conception of the individual and, correspondingly, a new conception of both individual and political freedom? Does it thus involve a new understanding of politics guided by the democratic ideals of the French Revolution? How, in that case, are we to make sense of the specific forms of sexism and racism that have been so widespread in the modern world? Or is modernity driven above all by the new economic system of capitalism itself and the various social dynamics and cultural values it brings with it-including, notably, the elevation of the profit motive to a major social ideal, the gradual commodification of every realm of nature and human life, the development of a global inter-state system, a volatile rhythm of technological and cultural innovation, and a pervasive dynamic of creative destruction?
Clearly it's necessary to bear in mind a range of social processes and cultural orientations in attempting to understand the history of modernity. In this course we will try to find our way into some of the many complexities of this history.
Provisional List of Readings: Charles Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, Part I; Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto; Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment; Jürgen Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society; Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity; Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy; Samir Amin, Eurocentrism.
Course Packet: essays by Marshall Berman (All That Is Solid Melts Into Air), Seyla Benhabib (Critique, Norm, and Utopia), J. M. Bernstein (Recovering Ethical Life), Gillian Rose (Mourning Becomes the Law), and Enrique Dussel (Beyond Philosophy and The Invention of the Americas).

495: Special Topics (3 cr; consent of Davidson Honors College required.)

Section 1-English Lexicography-MWF-1:10-2:00p-Ashby Kinch
Jim Morrison famously said, "Words got me the wound, and words will get me well, if you believe it." In some ways, he is merely echoing one of the oldest statements on the power of words, from the Agni Purana, an ancient Hindu tract on poetry, which claims: "A single word, if it is well-used and perfectly understood, is the Cow from which we draw all desires in this world and in heavens." What links lovers of words together across time is the fascination with the complexity, power, and richness of the lexical resources of language. This course is designed to stimulate student interest in lexical research as a tool for a more penetrating understanding of the literary and cultural function of words. In the first half of the semester, we will study the field of lexicography, including reading in the history and function of dictionaries in the English-language tradition. This reading will be centered on an analysis of the tools and techniques dictionary-makers utilize to make words more fully available to readers. By analyzing the selection and presentation of lexical evidence, as well as the structure and style of definition, students will critically explore a variety of dictionary resources available to modern readers. In the second half of class, we will discuss, beyond lexicography, a variety of critical, theoretical and poetic approaches to the value of words (Raymond Williams, René Daumal, Mickhail Bakthin, Henryette Mullen), as students develop their own projects in lexical research. Students will be encouraged to generate projects that relate to an area of language usage of specific interest to them, whether that be lexical study of a specific poet or the construction of a miniature dictionary within a well-defined lexical domain.
Required Work: Students will compile a "word hoard" (a standing repository and analysis of difficult or unusual words); compose weekly writings on issues in lexicography; and construct a lexical research project that results in a critical paper and/or an alternate project that reflects their research (example: an interactive web-page design).
Required Texts: Jackson, Howard, Lexicography: An Introduction; Winchester, Simon, The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary; a dictionary of your choice (you will bring this to every class meeting).

Section 2-Finnegans Wake-TR-11:10-12:30p-John Hunt
OK, so it's probably the most difficult book ever written in any language, and what language(s) is it written in? Who's speaking? Where are we? What's happening? Finnegans Wake is baffling, but it's also a real kick, once you start finding your way into its dreamlike, polysemous chains of thought. This class, taught by an instructor who is only starting to find his own way into the maze, will require nothing more of you than unflagging attention and hard work. Mastery isn't the aim--maybe not even a remote approximation of comprehension half the time. We'll pursue instead some beginner's familiarity with the polyglot language that Joyce constructed, and some facility at recognizing the recurrent characters, symbols, plots, themes, verbal motifs, places, numbers, historical incidents, and cosmic theories that tie the big book together. I'll expect you to supplement your own explorations of the text with the insights of published critics (we'll have a good-sized reserve shelf) and to share what you find with others, in a spirit of ongoing collaboration. There will be a number of short writing assignments, and a final paper.
Section 80- From the Black Death to AIDS: The Cultural and Scientific Impact of Plagues (Honors)-TR-9:40-11:00a-Herbert Swick (same as LS 494 and BIOL 495).
Disease has played an important role in the history of mankind. Epidemics of infectious disease, especially, have driven profound societal changes and transformed religious, political, and cultural institutions. They have led to important medical and scientific advances. From the Black Death to AIDS is an interdisciplinary capstone course that provides a rich opportunity to study the impact of disease, to understand seminal scientific advances, and to consider the complex interrelationships of science, society and culture through history, literature, art and music, as well as through the lens of medical and scientific knowledge. Reflecting the widespread impact of disease, participating faculty come from several departments, including Biology, English, History, Liberal Studies, Anthropology, Foreign Languages and Literature, and Art.

496: Independent Study (1-3 cr; ARRANGE; Prerequisite: consent of instructor and chair, and junior or senior standing)

499: Honors Thesis (1-9 cr; ARRANGE; Prerequisite: consent of department chair required)

520: Seminar in British Literature (3 cr; open to graduate students in CRWR, ENGL, EVST)

Section 1-Literature and Ecocriticism-M-7:10-10:00p-Louise Economides
This seminar will explore the question of what "ecocriticism" is by way of excavating its philosophical roots in literature of the Romantic period. Therefore, we'll investigate the variety of ideological commitments which fall under the rubric of ecological criticism and/or politics today by looking at the nascent contours of such discourse in romantic texts. As we will see, many key points of disagreement evident in contemporary eco-politics have antecedents in the work of romantic writers. For example, debates over wilderness protection versus urbanism, cosmopolitan modernity versus regionalism, technological utilitarianism versus picturesque aestheticism, and many other tensions have precedents in 19th-century literature. Therefore, in addition to examining the philosophical differences at work in first and second wave ecocriticism today (the latter including ecosocialism, ecofeminism, deep ecology, and systems-theoretical ecology), we'll explore ways in which romantic-era writers similarly negotiate "nature" through the lens of class, race, gender, species identification and scientific theory. Goals of the course include illuminating continuities as well as differences in contemporary and romantic ecological awareness, with a view to questioning what the future course of environmental politics may be - that is, whether we are on the cusp of a truly postmodern way of constructing nature that is capable of resolving the dualisms which troubled romanticism or of yielding more ecologically sustainable social systems. We'll also consider what role literature may play in such a project, according to both romantic and contemporary authors.
Texts: Zimmerman, Michael et. al., Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology; Abrams, M.H. The Norton Anthology of English Literature (Volume 2A: The Romantic Period); Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein and The Last Man; Course reader.

521: Seminar in American Literature (3 cr; open to graduate students in CRWR, ENGL, EVST)

Section 1-Ecocriticism-T-3:40-6:30p-David Moore
This course is a graduate version of ENLT 371 Literature and the Environment, adding more intensive critical theory to an exploration of ecocriticism, and tracing the emergence of ecocriticism in the last two decades out of earlier critical movements in gender studies, ethnic studies, feminism, poststructuralism, Russian formalism, and other theoretical lenses.
If a "sense of place" drives literature as the "environment" drives experience, how does literary study attend to that environment in a text? How would an ecological approach to literature change the way it is written or read? How would ecological scientific insights about the "nature" of humanity and the rest of the animate and inanimate world change literary study? Literary attention to the environment of a story filters through some of the same lenses through which more common narrative elements such as character, plot, and setting are represented. For instance, those lenses include gender, in the feminization of the land. They include race, in the identification of the wilderness with Natives. They include class, in the politics and cultural values of land ownership. We can understand stories on the land partly in terms of such lenses. How we represent the land can be as much a projection of our own "nature" as a reflection of nature and the environment, so we might explore those projections as we read the land and its stories. We might explore different representations of the land from writers of different genders and ethnicities. If we begin to look at our representations of nature and of ourselves from an environmental or ecological perspective, we begin to see new dynamics in the text.
Following on these questions, the course looks at the development of ecocriticism while it takes an historical approach to American representations of nature. A list of readings might include selections from the following writers: Thinking About the Environment, eds. Calm & O'Brien; Place of the Wild, ed. Burks; Shepherd Krech, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History; Linda Hogan, The Sweet Breathing of Plants: Women Writing on the Green World; Tom Butler, ed., Wild Earth: Wild Ideas for a World Out of Balance; Roderick Frazier Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind; Roger S. Gottlieb, ed. This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment; R. W. Emerson, RWE: Selected Essays, Lectures, and Poems; Henry David Thoreau, Walden & Other Writings; Clarence King, Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada; John Muir, Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf; Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac; Jack Kerouac, Dharma Bums; Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire; Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; Leslie Silko, Ceremony.
Section 2-The Post-1945 Ethnic American Novel-W-5:10-8:00p-Lynn Itagaki
This course will examine the viability of such a category as an ethnic American "novel" by studying recent texts by writers of color. In contextualizing our literary analysis, we will discuss terms such as postindustrial, ethnic postmodernism, post-marxism, post-human-terms often derived to describe the texts under consideration in this course. We will also study the complex, post-1945 impact of feminism, multiculturalism, ethnic studies, and transnationalism on contemporary literary studies. We will discuss works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Beatty, Ana Castillo, Louise Erdrich, Sesshu Foster, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, R. Zamora Linmark, Tomás Rivera, Anna Deavere Smith, and Karen Tei Yamashita.
Section 3-19th Century American Women's Novel-T-7:10-10:00p-Jill Bergman
In their introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Women's Writing, Dale Bauer and Philip Gould claim that "contemporary reappraisals of nineteenth-century American women's writing have changed both the shape of the American literary canon and the discipline of American literary history." In this course, we will explore this influential body of novels - most of which were tremendously popular in their day - along with some of the recent critical "reappraisals." We'll begin the semester with a number of novels written by American women from the early national and antebellum periods, periods when domesticity flourished and sentimentalism - the art of creating sympathy by appealing to emotion - enjoyed considerable cultural sanction. Women writers of this period created - and supplied - a seemingly insatiable demand among the middle-class reading public for sentimental novels, and Nathaniel Hawthorne's famed (and rather petulant) criticism of this "d-d mob of scribbling women" gives some insight into the cultural force women writers represented at this time. We'll then turn our attention to novels written after the Civil War, when a "Victorian" ideology began to lose ground in the U.S. and literary realism took hold as the dominant fictional form. Throughout the semester, and drawing on the critical work of Lori Merish, Lauren Berlant, June Howard, and Marianne Noble, we'll consider the ways in which novelists grapple with such issues as national identity, sentimentalism, Romantic individualism, consumerism, poverty relief and reform, class, the economics of writing and publishing, "high" and "low" art, race, and - of course -gender. The reading list represents a progression of literary forms: a cautionary seduction novel, sentimental and domestic novels, realism, naturalism, and finally a utopian novel. This course, therefore, provides an opportunity to consider the intersection of political and aesthetic purposes in women's fiction.
Possible Texts: Rowson, Charlotte Temple; Warner, The Wide Wide World; Sedgewick, Hope Leslie; Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall; Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin; Southworth, The Hidden Hand; Wilson, Our Nig; Phelps, The Silent Partner; Davis, Life in the Iron Mills and The Morgessons; Hopkins, Contending Forces; Wharton, The House of Mirth; selections from Merish's Sentimental Materialism, Noble's The Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature, Berlant's Anatomy of National Fantasy.

522: Seminar in Comparative Literature (3 cr; open to graduate students in CRWR, ENGL EVST, FLL; same as FLLG 522)

Section 1-Literature, Colonialism, empire-R-3:40-6:30p-Kathleen Kane
Post-National Theory and Culture: Literatures of Diaspora and Transnationalism in the Age of Globalization. Against the confining logic of national culture that has long dominated the theory and practice of Literary Studies in the American Academy, this course will explore the place, nature, and role of culture and literature in the context of globalization: a phenomena in which bodies, goods, and ideologies circulate through and coalesce within a variety of transnational circuits and maps. We will, of course, work to familiarize ourselves with the primary categories and terms of a literary and cultural studies increasingly preoccupied with the global nature of production and consumption of culture. Here the work of theorists such as Benedict Anderson, Appadurai, Paul Gilroy, David Harvey, Paik Nak-Chung and others will be important, However, the course will also consider contemporary novels and films that emerge out of a globalized "world order". In our readings of literatures from Caribbean, African, and East Indian diasporas, this course will examine how notions of home, community, selfhood, and exile intersect with the new economic and social arrangements known collectively as globalization. In our discussions of the course texts we will take up issues and questions concerning the relationship of memory, knowledge, and narrative, to immigration, exile, and citizenship.
Possible Texts: Agha Shahid Ali, Country without a Postoffice; Braziel, Janet, Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader (Authors include Radikrishnan, Appaduri, Lowe, Gilroy, et al); Bryant, Jerry, Born in a Mighty Bad Land: The Violent Man in African-American Folklore and Literature (Blacks in the Diaspora); Danticat, Edwidge, Breath, Eyes and Memory; Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies; Lamming, George, In the Castle of My Skin; Naples, Nancy A. Women's Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics; Paik Nak-Chung "Nations and Literatures in the Age of Globalization"; Stiglitz, Joseph E., Globalization and its Discontents

596: Graduate Independent Study (1-9 cr; Prerequisite: consent of instructor and chair.)

598: Cooperative Education Experience (1-9 cr; Prerequisite: consent of department)

599: Thesis (1-6 cr)

ENGLISH TEACHING (ENT)

398: Cooperative Education Experience (1-3 cr; Prerequisite: consent of department)

440: Teaching Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum (3 cr; Prerequisite: C&I 303, senior standing and consent of instructor)

Section 1-TR-9:40-11:00a-Beverly Chin
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: Teaching Literature (3 cr; Prerequisite: ENT 439, admission to teacher education, and consent of instructor)

Section 1-TR-8:10-9:30a-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 criteria, evaluation and curriculum of teaching traditional, multicultural, and young adult literature in grades 5-12. Teaching majors and minors in areas other than English should enroll in ENT 440.

442: Teaching Oral Language and Media Literacy (3 cr; Prerequisite: ENLI/LING 465, admission to teacher education, and consent of instructor)

Section 1-TR-12:40-2:00p-Joann Hoven
emphasis on preparation, implementation, and evaluation of teaching strategies and materials in grades 5-12. Includes learning objectives, teaching styles, unit plans, print and non-print media, and creative drama. 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.

593: Professional Paper (1-4 cr)

595: Special Topics (3 cr; teaching experience or senior standing [3.0 GPA and petition] with consent of instructor)

Section 1-Theories and Pedagogies of Literacy-T-5:10-8:00p-Heather Bruce
The central premise of this course is that what we learn and know about a subject is revealed in language, whether verbal or symbolic. Language is always already embedded in a cultural context. Therefore, to be able to understand complex uses of language, we must also understand the context in which language is used. Becoming literate in an academic context requires an understanding of the complex embeddedness of language use in all its global and local contexts, which include, but are not limited to the cultural contexts of the society, of the school, of the discipline, and of the classroom. To teach literate practices to students in the secondary school, literacy must be understood within all its cultural contexts.
The central question at issue for this course, then, concerns the relations among culture, language, literacy, teaching, and learning across the disciplinary curriculum of the secondary school. It is assumed that facility with the language of a discipline is central to knowing a discipline. Therefore, all teachers, regardless of their subject matter, are teachers of language and literacy. Therefore, developing literate practices among our students becomes the primary focus of English teaching and learning.

596: Graduate Independent Study (1-9 cr)

598: Cooperative Education Experience (1-3 cr; Prerequisite: consent of department)