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Course Descriptions
ENCR - Creative Writing | ENEX - Expository Writing | ENLI - Linguistics |
ENLT - Literature | ENT - English Teaching
Section 1-TR-11:10-12:30p-Staff
Section 2-TR-9:40-11:00a-Staff
Section 3-TR-12:40-2:00p-Robert Stubblefield (Open to ENGL/PREN majors only)
An introductory writing workshop focused on the reading, discussion, and revision of students' short fiction. Students will also be introduced o models of fiction techniques. No prior experience in writing short fiction required.
211A-3crs-Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry
Section 1-TR-9:40-11:00a--Staff (Open to ENGL/PREN majors only)
Section 2-TR-11:10-12:30p-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-3crs-Creative Writing: Fiction (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-TR-2:10-3:30p-Kate Gadbow
Section 2-TR-3:40-5:00p-Robert Stubblefield
An intermediate fiction writing workshop. Students will be expected to finish three to four 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 210A.
311-3crs-Creative Writing: Poetry (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-TR-2:10-3:30p-Prageeta Sharma
An intermediate workshop involving critical analysis of students' work-in-progress as well as reading and discussion of poems in an anthology. Numberous directed writing assignments, experiments, exercises focused on technical consideratioins like diction, rhythm, rhyme, and imagery.
410-3crs-Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-T-3:40-6:30p-Brady Udall
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-R-3:40-6:30p-Karen Volkman
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.
412-3crs-Creative Writing Non-Fiction (ENCR 310 and consent of instructor)
Section 1-M-5:10-8:00p-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.
495-3crs-Western Women's Memoir (Same as WS 495.01)
Section 1-MW-2:10-3:30p-Judy Blunt
496-1-3crs-Independent Study (Consent of instructor and department chair required)
510-3crs-Fiction Workshop (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-W-3:10-6:00p-Brady Udall
This is a fiction-writing workshop for MFA graduate students, with primary emphasis on the short story. We will devote considerable attention to the process of revision. Participants will contribute written critiques of the work discussed in class.
Section 2-T--3:40-6:30p-Kevin Canty
511-3crs-Poetry Workshop (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-T-7:10-10:00p-Prageeta Sharma
Section 2-W-3:10-6:00p-Bill Knott (Hugo Writer-in-Residence)
For students interested in writing poetry. In-class discussion of original poems. Students will be urged to send their work out to magazines, and to research the marketing options for poetry. Some class time may be spent on the latter. Course Objectives: To further develop each student's skills in writing poetry, and to foster publication goals. Course Calendar: Most but not all of our class time will be devoted to your poems. Each poem will be allotted, depending on the class's choice, 15-30 minutes. Poets work-shopped in alphabetical order. There will be occasional attention to texts from recognized poets. I may give some special assignments. Marketing of your work will be discussed. Reading assignments: occasional. Required texts: as needed. Caveat: Please remember that a workshop is a give-and-take process, requiring full participation from everyone. You are here to help and critique each other. Everyone must enter in to the discussion. This is not a request, this is a requirement. There may be, depending on circumstances, 1-3 special assignments. I don't require students to have conferences with me, but many in the past have been helped by such colloquies (or so they've told me!). If my office hours schedule is a problem for you, I can always work out another time to meet. Please don't wait till the end of the semester to make an appointment.
512-3crs-Nonfiction Workshop (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-W-7:10-10:00p-Judy Blunt
A creative writing workshop focused primarily on personal essay. Attention given to writing and publishing professional magazine essays. Students complete two substantial essays.
514-3crs-Techniques of Modern Fiction (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-R-5:10-8:00p-Kevin Canty
Intensive reading of contemporary prose writers. Primarily for graduate students in creative writing.
515-3crs-Traditional Prosody (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-R-7:10-10:00p-Bill Knott (Hugo Writer-in-Residence)
This will, in effect, be both a Lit and Writing class. What will we do in class? We'll discuss/analyze poems in form. More importantly, we will read and consider your own work, written in forms, written per assignment. Scansion and meter will be a major part of our concerns. We will also spend a lot of time working in collective fashion. Each student must put her or his work up on the board to be critiqued and assisted. Course Objectives: To familiarize students with the forms of poetry and with the awards and demands of meter and rhyme. To study and to practice writing in poetic forms. Course Calendar: I will issue specific reading assignments week by week. There may be occasional handouts of critical material to be read. The writing assignments will have flexible deadlines. I plan to begin with the sonnet; other forms will follow. Specific instructions will accompany each of these assignments. The schedule will be improvisational, and will respond to needs, interests and backgrounds. Course Requirements: You'll be assigned to write poems in approximately 5-? different forms during the semester. It will not be necessary to generate new subject matter/new content for each assigned poem-unless the assignment calls for such. In most cases, I will direct you to take something you've already written and remold it into the assigned form. Theoretically there's no reason why you can't rewrite the same poem for each new assignment. Required texts: to be assigned as needed. Caveats: This course is not for everyone. You will be writing in constraints-required to conform, to follow difficult, perhaps arbitrary guidelines. You will be expected to strictly adhere to the rules surrounding each assignment. This can be, this will be frustrating at times. Can you function-can you flourish -as a writer in such rigid circumstances? Can you tolerate these limits and regulations? Will the discipline of this class enrich your talent and skills, or will it thwart you? Only you can decide: but please take the time to think about it before committing yourself to such an arduous regimen.
In this class, process is more important than product. You must be willing to take a satisfactory piece and revise it further-not to make it better per se, but to use it in developing procedures of practice: in learning how to exercise.
Warning warning warning: this is not a workshop. Don't expect workshop indulgencies and niceties. I will do the best I can to equalize the time spent on each student's work, but there will be problems. If X is breezing through an assignment and Y is stumbling, more classtime attention will probably be given to Y: but X can gain valuable experience and can greatly benefit (I believe) by pitching in to help Y.
This is a course where each of you can learn a lot by working with the others, by actively assisting each other in the process of writing these forms. In fact, I may make mutual/reciprocal assignments.
A lot of our time will be spent working collectively. If you have problems participating in such group sessions-if you are hesitant or shy about putting your assignments up on the board and having them critiqued by the instructor and the other students, please reconsider.
And it's not just a matter of being critiqued; maybe the toughest thing about this class it that you must be willing to have your work revised by others: you must be willing not merely to consider but to adopt our input. It's unfair for the class to spend an hour solving your meter/rhyme and or other dilemmas, only to have you refuse those solutions out of pride or stubbornness, because you "wanted to do it myself."
In line with that, please try to remember always that you're writing assignments, not poems. The assignments you write may lead to or end up being valid poems, but that is not the purpose of the class.
516-3crs-Topics in Creative Writing (Consent of instructor required)
Section 1-T-3:40-6:30p-Karen Volkman
596-1-3crs-Graduate Independent Study (Consent of instructor and graduate chair required)
599-1-12crs-Thesis-ARRANGE-Staff
NOTE: During the autumn semester, ENEX 101 is restricted to students whose last name begins with the letters A-L. During the spring semester, ENEX 101 is restricted to students whose last name begins with the letters M-Z.
100-2crs-Basic Composition (Prereq,, minus score on Writing Placement Exam or referral by ENEX 101 instructor.)
For students with major difficulties in expository prose. Emphasis on forming, structuring, and development of ideas; tutorial emphasis on mechanics in special class hour to be arranged with instructor. Grading A,B,C,D,F, or NCR (no credit).
Section 1-TR-8:10-9:00a-Staff
Section 2-TR-10:10-11:00a-Staff
Section 3-TR-1:10-2:00p-Staff
Section 4-TR-12:10-1:00p-Staff
Section 5-TR-11:10-12:00p-Staff
Section 6-TR-11:10-12:00p-Staff
Section 7-TR-2:10-3:00p-Staff
Section 8-TR-7:10-8:00p-Staff
101-3crs-English Composition (Prereq., ENEX 100, or proof of passing score on Writing Placement Exam, or referral by ENEX 100 instructor.)
Expository prose and research paper; emphasis on structure, argument, 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. Grading A,B,C,D,F, or NCR (no credit).
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-11:10-12:00p-Staff
Section 8-MWF-11:10-12:00p-Staff
Section 9-MWF-12:10-1:00p-Staff
Section 10-MWF-1:10-2:00p-Staff
Section 11-MWF-1:10-2:00p-Staff
Section 12-MWF-2:10-3:00p-Staff
Section 13-MWF-2:10-3:00p-Staff
Section 14-MWF-2:10-3:00p-Staff
Section 15-MW-7:10-8:30p-Staff
Section 16-TR-8:10-9:30a-Staff
Section 17-TR-2:10-3:30p-Staff
Section 18-MWF-9:10-10:00a-Staff
Section 19-TR-9:40-11:00a-Staff
Section 20-MWF-2:10-3:00p-Staff
Section 21-TR-11:10-12:30p-Staff
Section 22-MWF-12:10-1:00p-Staff
Section 23-TR-11:10-12:30p-Staff
Section 24-TR-12:40-2:00p-Staff
Section 25-TR-12:40-2:00p-Staff
Section 26-TR-2:10-3:30p-Staff
Section 27-TR-2:10-3:30p-Staff
Section 28-TR-3:40-5:00p-StaffSection 80-Composition/Honors-MWF-11:10-12:00p-Staff (Consent of Davidson Honors College required)
195-3crs-Critical Reading/Critical Writing (Prereq., ENEX 101, Lower-Division Writing Course)
Section 1-Natural Sciences--TR-12:40-2:00p-Joseph Campana
Section 2-Social Sciences-MW-12:10-1:30p-Laurie Gries
Section 3-Business-TR-2:10-3:30p-Amy Ratto-Parks
Section 4-Humanities-MWF-9:10-10:00a-Robert Stubblefield
198-1-12crs-Cooperative Education Experience-ARRANGE-Chris Knight (Prereq., 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.
398-1-12crs-Cooperative Educational Experience-ARRANGE-Chris Knight (Prereq., Consent of department chair and Cooperative Education Office.)
495-3 crs-Women, Writing, and Rhetoric
Section 1-MWF-11:10-12:00p-Kate Ryan
And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives. Audre Lorde
This course heeds Audre Lorde's challenge that we read and study women's words and talk about what we can learn - as writers, readers, and speakers - from them. We'll read primary works by historical women like Ida B. Wells and Elizabeth Cady Stanton as well as contemporary women, including Paula Gunn Allen, Toni Morrison, and anthropologist Ruth Behar. We'll also read critical essays about women's writing and speaking practices, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as a handful of articles to inform our discussions about women, writing, and rhetoric.
The course will explore the following questions: What can we learn from reading and studying women's voices? What strategies have women writers and speakers used to achieve their goals? In the context of these conversations, students will be introduced to rhetoric and learn rhetorical approaches for interpreting texts and composing their own. We'll talk about what the relationship between women and rhetoric and explore what women's rhetoric(s) can teach us - men and women - about our own writing and speaking practices.
Students will write informal responses to readings in and out of class, a rhetorical analysis of a piece of writing, reflections on their own writing practices, and a final paper. Class will be a mixture of discussion, writing workshops, and mini-lectures.
TEXTS: Logan, Shirley Wilson, ed. With Pen and Voice: A Critical Anthology of Nineteenth-Century African-American Women; Ritchie, Joy and Kate Ronald, eds. Available Means: An Anthology of Women's Rhetoric(s); a selection of electronic readings
540-1cr-Teaching College Level Composition (Restricted to ENEX 100/101 TAs)
Section 1-M-3:10-5:00p-Kate Ryan
Section 2-M-3:10-5:00p-Eric Reimer
Section 3-M-3:10-5:00p-Joseph Campana
465-3 crs-Structure of English for Teachers (Same as LING 465)
Section 1-W-6:10-9:00p-Steve Tull
120-3crs-Introduction to Critical Interpretation (Lower division writing course)
Section 1-MWF-11:10-12:00p-Rob Browning
Section 2-MWF-9:10-10:00a-Joseph Campana
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.
121-3crs-Introduction to Poetry (Lower division writing course)
Section 1-MWF-12:10-1:00p-Jocelyn Siler
Section 2-MWF-2:10-3:00p-Jocelyn Siler
An introduction to the techniques of reading and writing about poetry with emphasis on the lyric and other shorter forms.
222-3crs-British Literature Through the 18th Century
Section 1-TR-11:10-12:30p-Ashby Kinch (Open to ENGL/PREN majors only)
Section 2-TR-2:10-3:30p-Ashby Kinch
Required Texts: The Norton Anthology of English Literature (Vol. 1. 7th Edition); Murfin, Ross and Supryia M. Ray. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. Course Description This survey intends to provide students with a historical, cultural, linguistic, and intellectual framework for understanding the literature produced in Britain between the 8th century, when Anglo-Saxon culture produced its first major literary texts, and the 18th century, when citizens of a modern British state published texts in a wide range of literary genres for a rapidly-expanding public readership. To address such a wide cultural span in such a short space of time-just under a century per week, on average-is a Herculean task. But this kind of survey creates an invaluable context for your future reading, which will augment, amplify, and complicate the narrative of this class. The course will introduce and elaborate specific literary and cultural problems, which you will then address in greater detail in class discussion, group discussion, and both informal and formal writing.
There will be three parts to this course: 1) Theme, Context, and Culture: Beowulf to Milton; 2) Genre, Continuity, and Change: The English Short Poem; 3) The Ascendance of Prose and the Public Literary Market. The first two parts will recapitulate a basic literary history from the Anglo-Saxon period to the Restoration (or, in linguistic terms, from Old English to Early Modern English) through two different lenses: 1) through attention to longer narrative and dramatic works from Beowulf to Milton's Paradise Lost, reflecting on cultural definitions of heroism; social conflicts; the struggle with evil); and 2) through attention to short lyric poems, in which we will pay specific attention to form and style. The course will thus re-enforce the chronological framework of the survey through repetition, as well as develop student sensitivity to genre and poetics. A brief third section will address innovations in prose writing that emerge out of specific cultural changes in the 18th century.
223-3crs-British Literature in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Lower division writing course)
Section 1-MWF-1:10-2:00p-Eric Reimer (Open to ENGL/PREN majors only)
Section 2-MWF-11:10-12:00p-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, you will become acquainted with the significant characteristics of some of the major British literary-historical periods (Romantic, Victorian, Modern, Contemporary). Thus, in addition to practicing close reading on individual texts, we will discuss the social, historical, and political contexts of the authors and their works, as well as attend to matters of genre, form, and literary tradition. There is no thematic organization for the course, but we will throughout the semester be considering the changing notions of self, language, and nation, especially as they are pressured by nature, religion, science, and historical trauma. In this course students will write critical essays, work closely with poetic form, sharpen research skills, and sample contemporary literary theory, but everything will begin with (and depend upon) committed and energetic reading of the assigned texts, will be drawn from the Norton Anthology of English Literature (eighth edition) and such additional readings as Walter Scott's short story, "The Two Drovers," and Virginia Woolf's novel, To the Lighthouse.
224-3crs-American Literature to 1865 (Lower division writing course)
Section 1-TR-12:40-2:00p-Christopher Knight (Open to ENGL/PREN majors only)
Section 80--HONORS-TR-9:40-11:00a-Christopher Knight (consent of Davidson Honors college required).
Representative texts from the pre-colonial period through the Civil War.
225-3crs-American Literature Since 1865 (Lower division writing course)
Section 1-TR-2:10-3:30p-Lynn Itagaki (Open to ENGL/PREN majors only)
"Americans Not at Home: Bordering the Citizen-Immigrant-'Other.'" This course will examine a broad spectrum of important literary texts by U.S. writers after 1865. We will look at how these novelists, poets, playwrights, and essayists use literature to reflect and rework their contemporary historical and literary contexts. The course introduces students to reading the principal forms of literature (poetry, prose, fiction, and drama) analytically. Strengthening knowledge of literary interpretation and analysis, this course will encourage students to examine what writers convey through their fictional works and how to analyze the ramifications and influence of these literary texts on their critical thinking.
Section 80-HONORS-TR-11:10-12:30p-Lynn Itagaki (consent of Davidson Honors College required for Section 80)
227-3cr-Film as Lit, Lit as Film (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.
301-3crs-Applied Literary Criticism (Prereq. Or coreq., 12 credits of lower division ENLT courses.) Upper division writing course.
Section 1-TR-2:10-3:30p-Michael McClintock
As the study of literature developed in the second half of the Twentieth Century, literary or critical theory has moved nearly to the center of the enterprise. The literary text, however variously defined or described (in and by theory, of course), remains at the focus, but critical reading of the text cannot be isolated--or insulated--from theory. In this course we shall both study a fairly wide variety of critical positions and test their application to a well-known literary text. Short papers; no final examination; attendance recorded.
Required texts: 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.
Section 2-TR-3:40-5:00p-Kathleen Kane
Section 3-MWF-10:10-11:00a-Louise Economides
320-3crs-Shakespeare (Prereq., ENLT 301 or consent of instructor.) Upper division writing course. NOT OPEN TO PREN MAJORS
Section 1-MWF-9:10-10:00a-Casey Charles
Section 2-MWF-11:10-12:00p-Casey Charles
How do we engage Shakespeare? Through reading, studying, watching, listening, and performing, to name some of the ways. This course introduces both the Shakespearean canon and the methods of connecting with that canon-on the page, on stage, on film, and through performance. We will read representative genres: history (Richard III), comedy (Merchant of Venice), tragedy (Othello), romance (Cymbeline), and "problem" play (Measure for Measure). Performance theory (and performance), film adaptation, historicism, and gender studies will comprise some of the approaches. Students will take weekly quizzes on the reading, perform a short scene, and write two papers.
Section 80-HONORS-TR-2:10-3:30p-Robert Pack (consent of Honors College required for Section 80)
A survey of selected Shakespeare plays emphasizing close reading of the texts and consideration of their dramatic possibilities.
321-3crs-James Joyce's Ulysses/Honors (Prereq., ENLT 301 or consent of instructor.) Upper division writing course (consent of Davidson Honors College required). NOT OPEN TO PREN MAJORS
Section 1-TR-2:10-3:30p-Bruce Hardy
James Joyce's Ulysses is considered by many to be the most important literary text of the 20th century. This is a complex masterpiece of literary art that has fascinated scholars and general readers because of the inexhaustible possibilities of interpretation, the myriad allusions to most of the Western canon, and especially the pleasure that is realized by a close reading.
The eighteen episodes, each written in a different style, are based on corresponding episodes of Homer's Odyssey, and are loosely applied to one day in the life of an extraordinary yet ordinary Dublin man named Leopold Bloom. It is also a continuation of the story of Stephen Dedalus, the young artist in Joyce's somewhat autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
James Joyce has included in Ulysses allusions and references to virtually all of the Western canon, such as the Old and New Testaments, Plato and Aristotle, Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, Dante Milton, and Shakespeare. We also learn much about Irish history, the Irish Literary Revival, and of course Joyce's literary aesthetic theories.
This course will be taught at the Davidson Honors College, though it is open to all interested students. It will be taught as a seminar, with discussion instead of formal lectures. Mostly, we will have a thoroughly enjoyable time exploring the myriad possibilities of the text, described by Joyce himself on page 345 as ".this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle."
323-3crs-Studies in Literary Forms (Prereq., ENLT 301 or consent of instructor. Upper division writing course. Same as LS 323) NOT OPEN TO PREN MAJORS
Section 1-Canadian Literature--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 as Ethel Wilson, Morley Callaghan, E.J. Pratt, and others the course will explore the development of Canadian letters, sound efforts in the 1960s and 1970s to found a "national literature," and map the ascendancy of Canadian writing to the world stage over the last thirty years. We'll analyze the challenges and complexities of creating a cross-cultural literature in such a vast and diverse colonial/postcolonial nation, and examine the importance of the north, place, history, race, gender, and more in CanLit. We'll ask what makes Canadian literature-if such a thing were possible-distinctly Canadian and explore Canadian anxieties over what makes a Canadian a Canadian. As the course proceeds, we'll also have opportunities to apply different critical theories to the primary texts.
Required texts (subject to revision): Atwood, Margaret Surfacing; Atwood & Weaver The New Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English; Davies, Robertson World of Wonders; Geddes, Gary, ed. 15 Canadian Poets X 3; Mistry, Rohinton Tales from Firozsha Baag.
Section 2-The Modern Verse Novel-MWF-2:10-3:00p-Casey Charles
This course examines some of the current attempts to combine narrative and poetics in the works of Walcott, C.D. Wright, Anne Carson, Merwin, and others. We will start by looking at a few samples of early verse narrative to familiarize ourselves with a tradition that found its voice in epic (Beowulf) and romance (Sir Gawain), both recently translated by contemporary poets. Students will write two papers, take quizzes.
Section 3-Literature of Place-MWF-11:10-12:00p-Nancy Cook
This course considers a body of literary texts in which place matters. We will focus on literary texts that represent the inland west (primarily).We will look at "the West" as an imagined construct as well as a set of geographical locations, with particular attention to the ways in which location figures as gendered, temporal, multicultural, classed, urban, rural, national, historical, geographical, and psychological. Some of the questions we might ask include: How do writers represent place? How does an author's cultural and historical position contribute to the representation of place? How much of the author's project involves revision, redefinition, or reclamation of place? How does a writer represent her relationship with/to the land? What are the relationships between genre and the representation of place? How does the text work to make distinctions between places, to set a place apart, to define it? How/what does "the West" mean for each author? What theoretical approaches work well for the reading of literature within place studies?
Students will read a literary text each week, a few foundational critical texts, and will prepare a series of short responses to the texts we will read. In addition, students will produce a theoretically informed close reading of a literary text as a final project. Required reading includes: Tim Creswell's Place: A Short Introduction and literary works drawn from some of the following writers: Judith Freeman, Dagoberto Gilb, Thomas McGuane, Terry Tempest Williams, Ivan Doig, Ruth Ozeki, Wallace Stegner, Jamie Harrison, Pam Houston, Thomas King, and others both familiar and obscure.
Section 80-Short Story/Honors-TR-11:10-12:30p-John Glendening (consent of Davidson Honors College required)
Section 81-Short Story/Honors-TR-11:10-12:30p-Robert Pack (consent of Davidson Honors College required)
Course description for both sections: This seminar will require the close reading of, and discussions about, classic texts in the American, English, and European traditions, with particular focus on the theme of truth and illusion. A few of the authors to be considered are Melville, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Joyce, Mann, Hemingway, and Faulkner. Two sections of the course will be offered, taught by Professors Glendening and Pack. Sometimes they will meet separately and sometimes jointly. Two papers will be required, due at mid-term and the end of the semester.
335-3crs-The American Novel (Prereq., ENLT 224L or 225L and prereq. or coreq., ENLT 301). NOT OPEN TO PREN MAJORS. Upper division writing course.
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, 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 to apply them to the primary texts.
Required texts (subject to revision): Davis, Rebecca Harding Life in the Iron Mills; Hemingway, Ernest The Sun Also Rises; Faulkner, William As I Lay Dying; Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick; Morrison, Toni Jazz; Ondaatje, Michael Coming Through Slaughter.
351-3crs-Donne and His Followers (Prereq., ENLT 301 or consent of instructor.) Upper division writing course. NOT OPEN TO PREN MAJORS
Section 1-TR-12:40-2:00p-John Hunt
This is a class for people who like poetry--the more challenging the better. The early 17th century writers often called the metaphysical poets produced dense, intellectually demanding works. Their aesthetic hallmarks--intense individualism, passion blended with intellectual argumentation, eroticism blended with spirituality, highly precise allusion, highly compressed significance--quickly lost favor as necolassical canons of taste took over later in the 17th century, and they did not enjoy a lasting revival of interest until the early 20th century. The class will cultivate the sequential line-by-line reading skills necessary to proper enjoyment of these poems, and we will also examine the not-quite-modern circumstances of Renaissance culture that made such writing, for a brief time, both possible and necessary. In addition to love poems, religious poems, and a few prose meditations and sermons by Donne, we will read poems by Henry King, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Henry Vaughan, and Andrew Marvell, a few prose meditations by Thomas Browne and Thomas Traherne, and a few passages from playwrights of the period. The semester will be divided into seven thematic units: Seductions, Struggles against love, Erotic exaltations, Departures and deaths, Self-surrenders, Ineffabilities, and Soul versus body. Each unit will last approximately two weeks and address works by different authors, though Donne's poems will receive most of the attention in the first four units, and less in later units. There will be three papers and a final exam.
353-3crs-Milton ( Prereq., ENLT 301 or consent of instructor.) Upper division writing course. NOT OPEN TO PREN MAJORS
Section 1-MWF-2:10-3:00p-Rob Browning
The purpose of this course is to familiarize students with a selection of Milton's most important works in both poetry and prose. We will devote special attention to how Milton works within and without the cultural traditions he inherited to engage with the theological, philosophical, and political controversies of his time. Because of its complexity and proportionate importance, Paradise Lost will be our focus for approximately half the semester. Along side the poem itself, students will read supplementary materials from the seventeenth century that provide glimpses into the cultural world out of which Milton fashions the imaginative landscapes of Heaven, Hell, the Garden of Eden, and Chaos. Graduate students will be expected, in addition, to read and report on current scholarship in the field. A unique feature of this class will be the attention we pay to the experience of first-time readers of Paradise Lost. Assuming we have a mix of both seasoned and first-time readers of the poem, we will set up study groups intended to stimulate dialogue between these different readers-my premise being that both perspectives are invaluable to understanding how the poem works.
395-3crs-Special Topics
Section 1-Literature of the Gaelic Revival-TR-12:40-2:00p-Terry O Riordain
Objectives: This course will look at the early stages of an ongoing Gaelic revival. This movement of regeneration originated as a response to the rapid Anglicization and the seemingly imminent destruction of the Irish language and culture as witnessed in Ireland in the aftermath of the Great Famine. Confined by neither geographical contour nor political or sectarian division, this cultural movement brought together members of the Irish Diaspora together with prominent members of the Protestant and Catholic communities of Ireland. This eclectic mix was keenly aware that the continued use of the Irish language depended greatly on the capacity of the indigenous resources of the language to engage the modern world. The meeting of tradition and modernity in the context of literature however proved to be very problematic for these revivalists especially in the field of poetry and, to a lesser extent, in prose. This course will examine the nature of this conflict and its implications for modern poetry and prose writing in the Irish language. It will also treat of drama in the Irish language. Unlike poetry and prose the development of a dramatic tradition was cut off by the collapse of Gaelic civilization. Consequently, the burden of tradition did not limit the scope and imagination of those engaged in the field of drama so that the history of theatre in the Irish language provides a unique insight into the intellectual and political development of the Irish cultural revival. It is also noteworthy that the most significant literary achievement of the revival was to encourage the production of Irish language dramas throughout Ireland. While the popular dramatic movement may not have succeeded in restoring the use of Irish in many of these areas, it did bring about a change of attitude to the language and engendered a strong commitment to its preservation. It has been argued that this new commitment to Gaelic culture provided the impetus and the rationale that shifted Irish political demands from Home Rule to the foundation of an independent Irish state.
Grading: Weekly in-class examinations 60%; mid-term exam 20%; final examination 20%.
Section 2-Gaelic Culture in Crisis-TR-8:10-9:30a-Terry O Riordain
Objectives: The history of Ireland may be characterized as a story of invasion with all its attendant cultural, political and social dislocations, followed by a period of accommodation, renewal and regeneration. The purpose of this course is to examine the response of Gaelic Ireland to invasion, conquest and colonization as articulated by its literature. The nature of this response has typically been twofold: first, there is the immediate reaction to the sense of doom that invasion brings and an understandable change in literary activity from a creative dynamic to a concern with compiling and preserving existing artifacts; second, the assimilation of the invaders frequently introduced a new voice as well as new forms and genres to the corpus of Irish literature. Beginning with the arrival of Christianity and emergence of the personal voice in Gaelic literature, we will look at the impact of the Viking invasions, the coming of the Normans and the subsequent Tudor conquest of Ireland. Of all the incursions, the Tudor conquest of Ireland is remarkable for the strategic importance it placed on the destruction of the lettered classes as a prerequisite for the successful integration of Ireland within the realm of English governance and the Protestant dispensation. The Tudor destruction of the aristocratic classes and the subsequent disintegration of the caste of professional poets they patronized resulted in a shift within Irish literature; the voice that celebrated and articulated the aspirations of an elite group was now replaced by tones of anger and defiance emanating from a people facing cultural extinction. A close examination of this literature will provide students with access to the voice of the colonized and bring them into immediate contact with the psychological and cultural trauma wrought through conquest and colonization.
Grading: weekly in-class examinations 60%; mid-term exam 20%; final examination 20%.
398-1-12crs-Cooperative Education Experience (Prereq., consent of department)
421-3crs-Topics in Critical Theory (Prereq., ENLT 301 and six credits in literature courses numbered 300 or higher or consent of instructor.) Same as LS 461.
Section 1-Globalization and Literature-TR-12:40-2:00p-Katie Kane
430-3crs-Studies in Comparative Literature (Same as LS 455/MCLG 440)
Section 1-Dante-TR-9:40-11:00a-John Hunt
This course will cover Dante's love lyrics (collected as La Vita Nuova) and all of his Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso), as well as looking at some of the more important precursor texts and intellectual contexts in medieval philosophy and mysticism, troubador love poetry, classical philosophy and epic poetry, and the Bible. Christian faith is not required for admission-rather the contrary is true of the instructor-but you should be prepared to assimilate a good deal of medieval religious doctrine as you follow one believer's passionate, personal, political, physical, probing struggles with the implications of his belief. Two medium-length papers and a final exam.
Section 2-Tragedy-TR-9:40-11:00a-Phil Fandozzi
The course will explore the genre of tragedy through the study of a selection of works, beginning with Greek dramas, a Shakespearean play, and ending with a modern work. We will also read Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy for an influential overview of the genre and selections from Walter Kaufmann's Tragedy and Philosophy. Perhaps we will also view one or two cinematic productions of tragedy.
495-3crs-Special Topics
Section 1-Renaissance Debate on Women-W-1:10-4:00p-Ruth Vanita (Same as WS/LS 495)
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.
496-1-3crs-Independent Study-ARRANGE (Prereq., consent of instructor and chair, and junior or senior standing.)
499-1-9crs-Honors Thesis-ARRANGE (Prereq., consent of department chair required.)
520-3crs-Seminar in British Literature (Open to graduate students in CRWR, ENGL, EVST)
Section 1-Speculative Fiction-TR-11:10-12:30p-Michael McClintock
The term, still not standard in scholarly discourse, has become an umbrella rubric covering science fiction, fantasy, some horror, alternative history, slipstream (another terminological innovation)-in general, much if not, indeed, all kinds of narrative fiction that may be epistemologically differentiated from the realistic forms dominant in the culture since the time of Austen and Scott. Part of our enterprise will be to identify examples of sf (in this sense of the acronym), so I won't provide a definitive reading list in advance, but I'll place several short examples on e-reserve and specify that we will study Gregory Benford's Timescape, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Seminar presentations and a research paper.
521-3crs-Seminar in American Literature (Open to graduate students in CRWR, ENGL, EVST)
Section 1-Post Civil Rights Literature-W-4:10-7:00p-Lynn Itagaki
"When Words Aren't Enough: Race, Reparations and Interracial Justice". This course will examine the way words are used to attempt to heal deep political, economic and social rifts in American society, especially over issues of racial justice and historical racism. We will look at the increasing emergence of formal apologies and monetary reparations in United States politics within the last ten years and examine how these political developments are reflected in contemporary American literature: how tensions are resolved, reconciled, or even remain marginal and overlooked. Through present-day discussions of past historical injustices, we will consider novels, short stories, graphic novels, rap lyrics, plays and essays in order to develop cogent arguments and marshal evidence in support of our opinions about controversial issues today. How do writers, writing within certain contexts, attempt to resolve long-standing political, social and economic issues regarding racial justice? We will likely consider Toni Morrison's Beloved, Art Spiegelman's Maus I, Louise Erdrich's Tracks, Gloria Anzaldua's La Frontera/Borderlands, Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, Simon Ortiz's From Sand Creek, Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Woman, Joy Kogawa's Obasan, Paul Beatty's The White Boy Shuffle, and Karen Tei Yamashita's Through the Arc of the Rainforest.
Section 2-Nation Stories-R-3:40-6:30p-Jill Bergman
Nations have long been understood to be defined not by their borders but, according to Frantz Fanon, by "the whole body of efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to describe, justify and praise the action through which that people has created itself and keeps itself in existence" (Wretched of the Earth). In this course, we will study some of those efforts in the context of U.S. nationalism by reading the "nation stories" through which national identity - Americanness - is negotiated and defined. We will divide our time between theoretical and fictional texts, developing a framework for reading and understanding the questions these novels ask and seek to answer. Some of the guiding questions for this course: How do stories conceive of the nation? What anxieties do nation stories seek to assuage? How do nation stories attempt to manage the challenges posed by unassimilated people? How do the stories of "unassimilated people" engage with dominant or official nation stories?
Possible Texts: Mary Rowlandson, Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson; Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter; Pauline Hopkins, Of One Blood; Henry James, The American; Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers; Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop; William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!; James Welch, Winter in the Blood; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities; Toni Morrison, Playing the in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination; selections from Franz Fanon, Sigmund Freud, Ann Douglas, Priscilla Wald, Lauren Berlant, etc.
522-3crs-Seminar in Comparative Literature (Open to graduate students in CRWR, ENGL, EVST, FLL. Same as FLLG 522)
Section 1-Spanish-American Lit in Translation-TR-11:10-12:30p-Clary Loisel
Section 2-Cultural Studies-F-3:10-6:00p-Katie Kane
524-3crs-Nature, Language and Politics (Same as PHIL 506) (Graduate Level)
Section 1-Re-Thinking the Animal--M-6:10-9:00p-Louise Economides
In this seminar, we will be investigating ideas of the animal at work in philosophical and literary texts of the modern period, from the 17th Century to the present. Over the past decade, scholarship in a variety of fields (including ethology, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, linguistics and critical theory) has yielded research that places considerable pressure upon the human-animal binary and raises the question of the "animal" in an unprecedented manner. Beginning with Descartes's characterization of the animal as machine, we'll trace an evolution in philosophical thinking about the animal, examining 18th and 19th century evaluations at work in texts by Kant, Montaigne, Bentham, Darwin and Nietzsche. Along the way, we'll consider literary constructions of animal and human identity in texts by authors such as Defoe, Swift, Thomson, Coleridge, Barbauld, Percy and Mary Shelley, Peacock, Stevenson, and Kipling. In the 20th Century, we'll look at philosophical texts by Heidegger, Levinas, Agamben, Derrida, Haraway, Wolfe, Singer and Abram with a view to examining the increasing importance of language as a site where animal and human identity is constructed and contested. We may also be reading 20th century literary texts that pose the question of the animal in interesting ways, including work by authors such as Conrad, Woolf, Lawrence, Hughes, Snyder, Dick and Yamashita. Although the scope of texts covered will be wide-ranging, the seminar's goals include highlighting what is at stake in humanist versus post-humanist accounts of the animal, questioning the role of ethics in such accounts, and addressing links between western constructions of animality and racial, gender, class and environmental politics. While the class will not focus upon animal rights and/or on political advocacy, it will address such issues as they arise within the context of the seminar's broader theoretical concerns.
596-1-9crs-Graduate Independent Study (Prereq., consent of instructor and chair.)
598-1-9crs-Cooperative Education Experience (Prereq., consent of department)
599-1-6crs-Thesis
398-1-3crs-Cooperative Education Experience (Prereq., consent of department)
440-3crs-Teaching Writing (Prereq., C&I 303, senior standing and consent of instructor)
Section 1-TR-9:40-11:00a-Beverly Chin
Emphasis on teaching writing in grades 5-12. Research about development and maturity of writers, overview of schools of writing/history of writing instruction, strategies for teaching writing as a process, elements of writing craft, criteria for assessing and responding to writing, peer-coaching methods, writing/reading workshops, the role of grammar in improving writing, writing/reading connections, assignment characteristics, and grading practices. Required of students pursuing secondary English major and minor teaching certificates.
441-3crs-Teaching Reading and Literature (Prereq., 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 reading and literature in grades 5-12. Research about the development and maturity of readers, strategies for teaching reading comprehension and vocabulary, strategies for diagnosing reading abilities and criteria for reading assessment, reading workshops/literature circles. 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. Focus on the design of lesson plans and curriculum using traditional, young adult, and multicultural literature in grades 5-12. Required of students pursuing secondary English major and minor teaching certificates.
442-3crs-Teaching Oral Language and Media Literacy (Prereq., 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.
546-3crs-Theories of Literary Criticism for Teachers (Prereq., Teaching experience or senior standing [3.0 GPA or higher] with consent of instructor. Consent of instructor required on override slip.)
Section 1-T-5:10-8:00p-Heather Bruce
This course entails the study of how readers make meaning of texts and how texts influence readers. Consequently, this course examines how secondary teachers of English language arts may teach their students to read critically and write critically about literary texts. The emphasis in the course is on teaching students to interpret literary texts: close reading, critical analysis and effective writing.
Writing assignments you will learn to teach include daily informal response papers, personal response, explication, comparison/contrast, analysis, applying a critical strategy and writing from sources. All writing assignments are taught with attention to the ongoing processes of writing?idea development, topic invention, multiple stages of drafting and paper development, revision, peer response collaboration and individual conferences with the professor. The course provides a strong basis for the continuing development of your students' reading and writing skills across the curriculum throughout their secondary years.
Students in this course will examine a number of canonic and contemporary texts through various critical lenses. Students will develop several lesson plans, which incorporate approaches to literary criticism in the teaching of novels and poetry. Each lesson plan will include strategies for reading to understand, reading to interpret and writing to critically analyze based on an interpretive framework.
593-1-4crs-Professional Paper
596-1-9crs-Graduate Independent Study
598-1-3crs-Cooperative Education Experience (Prereq., consent of department)
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