Emory University--- Undergraduate Program

101/181 | 100-level | 200-level | 300-level | 400-level

Eng 101WR: Expository Writing
Faculty. Max: 16

Content: Intensive writing course. Introduction to rhetorical principles and practical exercises in critical analysis, research protocols, exposition, and argumentation on selected themes and issues. Specific topics and readings vary: Consult descriptions for individual sections.

Texts: A rhetoric handbook and a good college-level dictionary may be required or recommended. Consult descriptions for individual sections; check with your instructor before buying texts.

Particulars: Students can expect to produce drafts and revisions of 4 to 6 substantial papers, including a research assignment, as well as journals, summaries, and other exercises (approximately 60-75 pages of writing altogether). Evaluation of students will include their performance in all phases of the course—writing assignments, exercises, and participation in class discussion and writing workshops—but will emphasize in particular the quality of finished writing with respect to careful thought, insightful analysis, effective argument, clear exposition, sophisticated style, and sensitivity to audience.

Descriptions of individual 101 sections.

*Completion of English 101 with a passing grade fulfills the Freshman Writing Requirement. No other writing requirements may be satisfied by English 101.

English 181WR: Writing About Literature
Faculty. Max: 16

Content: Intensive writing course. Introduction to principles of literary analysis, effective writing, and research protocols through the examination of literary works and the writing of exposition and argument in support of analytic/interpretive claims. Specific topics and readings vary: Consult descriptions for individual sections.

Texts: Typically, a literary anthology or three or four literary works may be required, as well as a rhetoric handbook and/or a good college-level dictionary. Consult descriptions for individual sections; check with your instructor before buying texts.

Particulars: Students can expect to produce drafts and revisions of 4-6 substantial papers, including a research assignment, as well as journals, summaries, and other short exercises (approximately 60-75 pages of writing altogether), quizzes and exams at the instructor's discretion. Consult descriptions for individual sections. Evaluation of students will include their performance in all phases of the course—writing assignments, exercises, and participation in class discussion and writing workshops—but will emphasize in particular the quality of finished writing with respect to careful thought, insightful analysis, effective argument, clear exposition, sophisticated style, and sensitivity to audience.

Descriptions of individual 181 sections.

*Completion of English 181 with a passing grade fulfills the Freshman Writing Requirement. No other writing requirements may be satisfied by English 181.

Eng 190S: Freshman Seminar
Faculty. Max: 15

Through the readings, assignments, and in-class discussions the seminars will emphasize the importance of reasoned discourse and intellectual community. Readings may be in both literary and non-literary genres in order to develop the critical reading skills of freshmen when engaging many different kinds of texts. Such skills will be developed through frequent writing assignments stressing standards of argumentation, stylistic sophistication, and the ability to express and defend an original and compelling thesis. The development of library and research skills will be featured in some seminars.

*Completion of English 190S will NOT fulfill the Freshman writing requirement.

Eng 190S: Freshman Seminar: Comedy
Gruber, MWF 11:45-12:35, Max: 15

Content: In this course we’ll study two kinds of literary works: (1) those that make us laugh and (2) those that attempt to explain why we do so. We’ll cover a wide range of western literature and literary history, including plays (e.g., Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid); prose (e.g., selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales or from Jonathan Swift’s and Mark Twain’s stories and essays), popular films and television shows (e.g., The Producers, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Simpsons); and literary and social theories of comedy (e.g., Henri Bergson’s “Laughter,” Freud, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, and Mikhail Bakhtin on the meaning of “carnival”).

Particulars: weekly writing assignments (1-2 pages each), occasional oral presentations, final examination.

(Freshman Seminar—Limited to first year students only)

Eng 190S: Liberalism vs. Conservatism: the Battle for America
Bauerlein/Grabar, TT 10:00-11:15, Max: 15

Content: We live in a partisan age with the social and political controversies of our time defined in liberal and conservative terms. Pundits square off on cable news shows and in op-ed pages. Politicians take an us-versus-them position. The issues themselves get clouded as viewers and voters try to figure out where they stand.

This course will jump into the fray, but start at the origins. We will read some of the classics of liberalism and conservatism, including works by Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Stuart Mill, John Dewey, and Booker T. Washington. Then we’ll explore more recent writings from the Right and the Left, including those by Ronald Reagan, Allan Bloom, Thomas Frank, and Camille Paglia.

During the semester, we will have several distinguished guests join us for class sessions to talk about their work. The tentative roster includes the Southeast bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, a leading journalist from The Weekly Standard, and the head of the Georgia Humanities Commission.

As a bonus, the guests will remain on campus for an extra day to meet with students one-on-one to talk about ideas and careers. We will host luncheons and debates, with good food and stimulating conversation. This will be a chance for students to exchange ideas and establish important connections with active and influential people in public life.

This will be a special course, an exciting engagement with ideas and controversies and notable figures. When they’ve finished the course, students will leave with a deeper understanding of American politics and democracy, and vibrant taste for civil debate.

Particulars: Short weekly papers (1-2 pages) responding to the readings and the speakers.

(Freshman Seminar—Limited to first-year students only.)

Eng 190S: Liberalism vs. Conservatism: the Battle for America
Bauerlein/Grabar, TT 1:00-2:15, Max: 15

Particulars: Short weekly papers (1-2 pages) responding to the readings and the speakers.

(Freshman Seminar—Limited to first year students only.)

Eng 205WR: Poetry
Faculty. Max: 15

REQUIRED FOR ALL ENGLISH MAJORS (not required for English/Creative Writing majors)
For course times and section numbers, please see the course schedule.

Content: This seminar is designed for students, including advanced placement students, who wish to develop their reading and writing skills through the study of poetry and poetic forms and for students who may wish to become English majors. Though the topics of this writing-intensive course vary, the primary goal of each section is to develop the arts of reading and writing about poetry with interpretive skill.

Descriptions of individual English 205 descriptions.

Students are strongly encouraged to take English 205 in their freshman or sophomore year.

Eng 216: History of Drama and Theater II
Evenden, MWF 11:45-12:35, Max: 25 (10) Eng 216/(15) Thea 216

Content: A study of Western drama from the 18th century through the modern period. Reading of representative dramas, an average of two per week, with special attention given to their cultural and historical contexts.

Texts: Students will be expected to read two to three plays a week. Playwrights to be covered include Lillo, Marivaux, Schiller, Scribe, Feydeau, Ibsen, Shaw, Chekhov, Strindberg, Brecht, Beckett, Muller.

Particulars: Four equally-weighted exams, including take-home analytic essays and optional final paper.

Comment: This course counts toward the English and Theaters Studies majors. It also satisfies General Education Requirement IV B, Humanities: Arts.

Eng 251: American Literature: 1865 to Present
Bauerlein, MWF 3:00-3:50, Max: 75

Content: Readings in major American authors from 1865 to the present, including Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Henry James, Kate Chopin, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Ernest Hemingway, and W. E. B. DuBois.

Texts: The American Tradition in Literature, vol. 2, edited by Perkins and Perkins (McGraw-Hill); and The Literature Student's Survival Kit, by Ian Littlewood (Blackwell)

Particulars: Numerous quizzes and homework assignments, along with two midterms and a final exam.

Eng 258: Introduction to Irish Studies
Higgins, TT 2:30-3:45, Max: 25

Content: What is Irish Studies? Primarily an investigation into a (disputed) territory, a (diasporic) people, or a study of the cultural output of a tiny Western island? This course will introduce students to the issues, texts, and methodologies animating Irish Studies today. We will begin by looking at the development of Irish Studies from an offshore scion of English literature to its current position as a burgeoning field not only in Anglo-America but in Eastern Europe, Asia, and the former Soviet Union. Topics for discussion will include political, literary, and cultural constructions of Irishness, the Diaspora, the Celtic Tiger, and Irish Exceptionalism. The interdisciplinary emphasis of the class will be enhanced by the inclusion of guest speakers and writers from a range of academic departments at Emory.

Particulars: Mandatory learnlink responses, one 5-page paper, a theatre review, presentations, and a final research paper. Readings will include excerpts from a number of disciplines, as well as two or three books on specific topics. This course is a requirement for the Irish Studies Minor (see www.irishstudies.emory.edu), but does not fulfill the College Writing requirement.

Eng 304WR: Chaucer
Morey, MWF 9:35-10:25, Max: 25

Content: This course covers Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, selected Canterbury Tales, and several of his dream visions, with supplementary readings of literary analogues and historical and intellectual background. Early in the class we will concentrate on learning to read Chaucer's fourteenth-century London dialect. The class will consist primarily of discussion interspersed with short lectures and textual close reading. Emphasis will fall on the literary and cultural contexts of fourteenth-century English poetry, particularly Chaucer's unique synthesis of classical (e.g., Ovid), vernacular (e.g., Dante) and biblical models and on how Chaucer redefines the medieval traditions of epic, romance, fabliau, Breton lay, saint's life, exemplum, et al., to become the "father of English poetry." Our goals are to fathom at least three of the great mysteries of Chaucer’s life and work: How such a prolific poet could also find time to be a prominent diplomat and court official, how his poetic persona consistently veils and deprecates his genius, and how his sometimes notorious relationships with women find poetic expression.

Texts: Chaucer’s Dream Poetry, ed. Phillips and Havely; Troilus and Criseyde, ed. Barney; The Canterbury Tales, ed. Kolve and Olson.

Particulars: reading quizzes, four five-page papers, final examination.

Eng 310WR: Medieval and Renaissance Drama
Bugge, TT 10:00-11:15, Max: 25

Content: Eclectic in theoretical approach, this course will survey a large and representative selection of English medieval (and early Renaissance) dramas from many points of view, but particularly from perspectives in theology, anthropology, and performance theory.

Texts: Readings in secondary literature will be required from a reserve list. Readings of primary texts will be supplemented at regular intervals by films and videotapes of modern versions of medieval plays.

Particulars: Short response papers each week and a longer project at the term instead of a final examination. Active participation in class discussion is expected.

This course satisfies the post-freshman-year writing requirement.

Eng 332WR: Victorian Literature: Victorian Intersections
Peterson, TT 10:00-11:15, Max: 25

Content: Citizens under the reign of Queen Victoria witnessed material and intellectual innovations that radically altered their experience of the world. This course will examine these dramatic changes in the social, artistic, and scientific arenas and the manner in which the thinkers and artists of the period grappled with these changes. We will concentrate on the relationship of individuals to their culture through a study of literature’s intersection with other cultural productions, including but not limited to, painting, illustration, technology, and architecture. Throughout the course, we will pay particular attention to the relationship between literature and visual art in the Victorian period as we examine a variety of visual materials created alongside the literary texts under consideration. With this relationship in mind, we will reflect on the implications of Matthew Arnold’s suggestion that culture is the state of perpetual dissatisfaction. What kind of artistic productions are possible in such a world? What is the status of literature in a world that is always changing and growing? Through close reading and written evaluation, we will attempt to understand the Victorians through their engagement with an ever-changing and increasingly alienating world.

Eng 351WR: American Literature: 1830-1900: Antebellum American Literature
Reiss, MWF 2:00-2:50, Max: 25

Content: This course covers literature in the United States from roughly 1830-1860. During this period, the United States experienced an explosion of intellectual and literary activity, with writers like Melville, Hawthorne, and Emerson gaining international reputations. At the same time, political debates over slavery, territorial expansion, and women’s rights grew to a feverish pitch, and new kinds of rowdy popular culture were challenging elitist sensibilities. We’ll read some of the acknowledged classics of this turbulent time alongside some neglected gems, political writings, and works of popular culture.

Texts: Authors to be studied include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Thompson, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Harriet Wilson, and Frederick Douglass.

Particulars: Course requirments include regular participation in class discussion; three short papers (4-5 pages); one longer paper (8 pages) incorporating research; and a final exam.

Eng 356WR: Native American Literature:Grandmothers and Granddaughters: A Century of Native American Women Writing
Davis, TT 1:00-2:15, Max: 25

Content: The purpose of this course is to increase student familiarity twentieth-century writing by Native American women writers. The contributions of Native American women to the American literary canon over the course of the last century are significant and manifold. Through a series of readings, we will attempt to determine whether there are overarching themes which tie together these texts and also how the writing of Native American women fits into the broader scheme of Native American literary production and American literature. Course will include literary texts published between 1900 and 2000, supplemented by critical theory about Native American literature and women’s writings. Additionally, this course will continue to develop the critical and analytical reading and writing skills necessary for writing about literature.

Texts may include: Waterlily, Old Indian Legends, Tracks, and selected poetry.

Eng 359WR: African American Literature since 1900: African American Literature in the Age of Insurgency
Jackson, MWF 10:40-11:30, Max: 25 (20) Eng 359WR/(5) AAS 272WR

Content: This course will explore the intersecting dynamics of memory, race, sexuality, nostalgia, social class, and nationality in fiction narratives written by African Americans between roughly 1960 and 1980. What specific contours of African American experience took shape during this period? Did these works construct narratives of political and cultural resistance?

Texts: We will read books by Malcolm X, John A. Williams, James Alan McPherson, Ishmael Reed, Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison, David Bradley, Paule Marshall, Ernest Gaines, Alice Walker, and Toni Cade Bambara.

Particulars: Participation in class discussion, a ten-minute group presentation, weekly two-page position papers on the required reading, two short (5-6pp) papers, a midterm, and a final.

Eng 366WR: Contemporary Drama
Gruber, MWF 2:00-2:50, Max: 25

Content: In this course we will read the work of three major dramatists who were also major novelists: Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, and Marguerite Duras. We will study these playwrights' development over the last half of the twentieth century as they mix playwriting with other artistic modes or mediums, including narrative fiction, film, television, painting, and performance art. We will also read some representative works from lesser playwrights whose work reflects broad historical trends, including writers such as Peter Handke, Howard Brenton, Caryl Churchill, Tom Stoppard, Maria Irene Fornes, Anna Deavere Smith, and Peter Turrini.

Texts will likely include: Beckett, Shorter Plays, and The Complete Short Prose; Bernhard, The President, Eve of Retirement, Force of Habit, and Three Novellas; Duras, Hiroshima, Mon Amour, India Song, and The Ravishing of Lol Stein; and plays such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Stoppard), Christie in Love and The Saliva Milkshake (Brenton), The Danube (Fornes), and Fires in the Mirror (Deavere Smith).

Particulars: Three short papers (3-4 pages each), one research paper (12-15 pages), and a final exam.

Eng 383R: Studies in Women's Fiction: Dangerous Women: Feminist Science Fiction
Jones, TT 10:00-11:15, Max: 18 (9) Eng 383R/(9) WS 383

Content: Long considered the domain of a white masculine reader- and writership, frequently characterized by the employ of time machines and zap guns, the genre of science fiction has been revolutionized over the past thirty to thirty-five years by the influence and increased participation of women in the field, so much so that in 1991 the James Tiptree, Jr. Award was founded. The award recognizes literature by women and men who challenge the conceptions of traditional gender roles and provide provocative speculation about changes in our societies relative to so-called normative gender and sexuality. Through the examination of the literature of various Tiptree Award winners, this course will mine the way in which feminist science fiction not only challenges our hidden assumptions and confronts the unconscious prejudices that influence our perceptions, but imagines worlds beyond our current social limitations.

Possible Texts: Ursula LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness; Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale; Joanna Russ, The Female Man; Hiromi Goto, The Kappa Child, Octavia Butler, Wild Seed.

Particulars: TBA

Eng 384R: Criticism: Literary Theory
Caruth, Th 1:00-4:00, Max: 15 (5) Eng 384RWR/(15) CPLT 302

Content: An introduction to literary theoretical thinking, focusing on twentieth-century structuralism, post-structuralism, and contemporary theory. We will examine the ways in which "language" is conceived and reconceived by major theoretical writers and the implications of this rethinkig for our notions of history, politics, ideology, sexuality, trauma, etc.

Texts: Authors include Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, Shoshana Felman, Thomas Keenan, Peggy Phelan, among others.

Particulars: Active class participation, ungraded but required weekly paragraphs (on major theoretical terms), and a final graded paper (7-10 pages).

Eng 386WR: Literature and Science: The 20th Century and Beyond
Johnston, MWF 9:35-10:25, Max: 20 (15) Eng 386WR/(5) CPLT 389WR

Content: In this course we will read a series of novels, plays, and essays in which the writers engage with some of the fundamental issues of modern science by framing them in relation to more specifically social and philosophical concerns. We will begin with two chapters from Henry Adams’ autobiography in which he recounts his persistent attempt to discover the meaning of the new science at the dawn of the 20th century. Albert Lightman’s Einstein’s Dream and Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen will introduce new perspectives on human experience through the lenses of relativity theory and quantum physics respectively. With Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, we confront the uncertainties of cybernetic feedback and information overload. Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia will seduce us with “chaos theory” and playfully change our basic ideas about order and complexity. In Greg Bear’s Darwin’s Radio, we will be initiated into the complexities of evolution, DNA, and retro viruses. In Astro Teller’s e-mail novel, exegesis, an Artificial Intelligence will force us to grapple with new questions about the nature of life and intelligence and how we should define the human. Finally, in Linda Nagata’s visionary novel, The Bohr Maker, we will see how transformations brought about by nanotechnology can alter our conceptions of not only the posthuman body but of nature and the earth itself.

Required texts: In addition to the literary works listed above, there will be short reading assignments on key scientific ideas in the form of xeroxed hand-outs and essays available on the Internet.

Particulars: Attendance and participation in class discussion, 2 essays, a midterm exam, and final exam or a research essay.

Eng 389RSWR: Special Topics in Literature: Contending Identities in Korean American Literature
Ayer, TT 2:30-3:45, Max: 25

Content: What does it mean to be a Korean American, and who gets to decide? This course explores the responses of three generations of Korean American writers to these questions. In novels, poems, and memoirs published over the past seventy years, these writers relive the historical events and cultural conflicts that have shaped the Korean American’s sense of identity, citizenship, and subjectivity.

Recurring images of atrocities suffered during the Japanese occupation of Korea, the partition of 1945, and the Korean War intermingle with equally horrifying images of the Korean immigrants’ experiences in the U.S., where, denied citizenship and property rights, they were treated as “alien others.” By creating a common memory bank, this literature plays an integral role in the identity formation of contemporary Korean Americans.

The first half of the course focuses on the Japanese occupation of Korea (1905-1945) and its effects on the immigrants who fled to the U.S. to escape it. Accounts of specific events in Korean history illuminate the narratives of immigrant life in America during the first half of the twentieth century. Next, we zero in on a particular historical moment—the experiences of the Comfort Women, who were forced to become the sexual slaves of Japanese soldiers—described from two different perspectives: a teenager and former Comfort Woman living in Korea and the daughter of a Comfort Woman living in Hawaii.

In the second half of the course, the focus shifts to the experiences of more recent Korean immigrants and their children in various parts of the U.S. and Tokyo.

Texts: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee; Susan Choi, The Foreign Student; Younghill Kang, East Goes West: The Making of an Oriental Yankee; Nora Okja Keller, Comfort Woman; Suki Kim, The Interpreter; Richard Kim, Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood; Ronyoung Kim, Clay Walls; Chang-Rae Lee, Native Speaker; Don Lee, Country of Origin; Mary Paik Lee, Quiet Odyssey; Therese Park, The Gift of the Emperor, as well as selected poems by Suji Kwock Kim, Ishle Yi Park, and Cathy Song, online readings, and selected films.

Particulars: Frequent writer’s log entries, three papers, 1-2 research projects, and a presentation, as well as active participation.

Eng 389RWR: Special Topics in Literature: W. B. Yeats
Chace, W., TT 11:30-12:45, Max: 25

Content: This course will focus on the growth of the phenomenon of “William Butler Yeats” as a literary achievement. It will examine a large selection of his poems, some of his plays, and some of his essays in an effort to understand how the poet designed his career to produce the substantial effect of a monumental artistic triumph.

Texts: The single text to be used is: Richard J. Finneran, ed. The Yeats Reader, Revised Edition: A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama, and Prose (Scribner, 2002). We will also take advantage of the considerable holdings of Yeats material collected by the Emory Library.

Particulars: Students will be responsible for the writing of three essays during the course and for assuming, now and again, the leadership of some of our class discussions. Contributions to those discussions will carry considerable weight in the assignment of letter grades.

Eng 389RWR: Special Topics in Literature: James Joyce
Chace, W., TT 2:30-3:45, Max: 25

Content: This course focuses on three of Joyce's writings: Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses. It will examine them from perspectives at once literary, historical, and social. Each of the books will be studied in its entirety, but the major emphasis of the course (which will combine lectures and discussion) will be on Ulysses.

Texts: James Joyce, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses.

Particulars: The writing demands of the course are three essays, one on each of the books. They will be 1250, 1500, and 2500 words in length, respectively. The course is eligible for a student to attempt to satisfy a college writing requirement.

Eng 389RWR: Special Topics in Literature: Memory and Place in Southern Literature
Ladd, MWF 11:45-12:35, Max: 25

Content: The U.S. South is often distinguished from the rest of the United States as a culture of place and memory in a “great nation of futurity” (as John L. O’Sullivan described the U.S. in the mid-19th century). Where the rest of the nation is defined by migration, by alienation, by a will to forget the past, by a commitment to the future, the South is said to be defined by a “sense of place,” by community, by memory. We are going to explore, this semester, a selection of southern literary texts (essays, memoirs, short stories, novels) and some theoretical/philosophical work on the idea of place and memory in order to test the above conventional wisdom.

Texts: Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition; Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men; Arna Bontemps, Black Thunder, Gabriel's Revolt: Virginia, 1800; William Demby, Beetlecreek; Donald Harington, The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks; Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood; Katherine Anne Porter, Flowering Judas and Other Stories. We will also read selections from Edward S. Casey, St. Augustine, Proust, Freud, Nietzsche, Morrison, and others on place and memory. Supplementary e-texts and other material available through a Blackboard website.

Particulars: Regular attendance, preparation, and intelligent participation. Two papers (one of 5-7 pages and another of 10-12 pages); one presentation (a 4-page essay on the subject of your final paper to be read in class as part of a panel of presentations); 2 examinations (one of them the final exam); unannounced quizzes and short writing assignments (in-class and out-of-class).

Eng 389R: Special Topics in Literature: Reading Alice Walker
Warren, W 4:00-6:00, Max: 15 (2) Eng 389R/(11) AAS 385 W/(2) WS 385

Content: In this seminar students will study the novels by Alice Walker. Major emphasis of the course centers on discussion and analysis of the texts. The goal of the seminar is to create a cycle of reading, reflecting, discussing, analyzing, and writing about Walker’s texts, understanding their relationship to the African American literary tradition in general and to African American women’s literature and history in particular.

Texts: The Third Life of Grange Copeland; Meridian; The Color Purple; The Temple of My Familiar; Possessing the Secret of Joy, By the Light of My Father’s Eyes; Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart; In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens.

Particulars: 5 short critical papers (2-3 pages), one oral presentation, midterm, and final examination.

Eng 389RWR: Special Topics in Literature: Literature and Psychology: On Going Mad in America
Reiss, MWF 10:40-11:30, Max: 25 (20) Eng 389RWR/(5) AMST 385WR

Content: In this course, we will be reading a wide variety of texts in American literary history that explore the relations between creativity and madness. In the process, we will also be asking how changing conceptions of the mind and of society have related to attempts to understand irrational or sub-rational states of being, how writers have used these changing ideas to confront the world around them, and how psychological, medical, and literary language have interacted at different historical moments. We will be reading novels, short stories, and memoirs, ranging from narratives of incarceration in mental hospitals to crime fiction featuring sleepwalkers and psycho killers.

Texts: Texts will likely include Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntly; Edgar Allan Poe, selected short stories; Jones Very, selected poems; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall-Paper; Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar; Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; Ross MacDonald, The Chill, Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted; and the Frederick Wiseman film Titicut Follies. We will also be reading writings on madness, literature, and society by Michel Foucault, Erving Goffman, Sigmund Freud, Elaine Showalter, Nancy Tomes, Ian Hacking, and Shoshana Felman.

Particulars: Course requirments include regular participation in class discussion; three short papers (5-6 pages); and one final project involving a presentation to class members and a final paper on an artistic representation of madness not covered in the course readings.

Eng 389RWR: Special Topics in Literature: Studies in Shakespeare: Hamlet
Rusche, TT 11:30-12:45, Max: 25

Content: In this semester-long course in Hamlet—probably the most widely known work of literature in the world—we will begin by reading the play aloud. This takes about two weeks as the class reads and we pause to point out important ideas, themes, and images in Hamlet, as well as the important works in the critical tradition. After our recitation of the play, we will study the revenge tragedy and put Hamlet in its generic and historical context; the plays will include Seneca’s Thyestes, Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, and Shakespeare’s earlier revenge tragedy, Titus Andronicus.

We will then move on to the “appropriations” of Hamlet, including some memorable stage productions, most of the film versions of the play, Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and Hamletmaschine by Muller and Rihm. We have way too much material for a semester, but we shall pick and choose from the most important appropriations of Hamlet.

Particulars: I shall ask you to write a number of short papers throughout the semester (reviews, abstracts of articles and reviews, responses to the readings, etc.). I will have no final long paper or examination, but you will design as your final project a web site on a topic of your choosing that will be presented to the class on examination day.

Eng 389R: Special Topics in Literature: Black Women Writer's the Emergence of a Tradition, 1892 to the Present
Byrd, TT 10:00-11:15, Max: 5 (5) Eng 389R/(10) AAS 385

Content: This course chronicles the emergence and development of the tradition in fiction by African American women's writers beginning in the late 19th century to the present moment. The eras and literary movements covered in the course are the post-bellum period, the Harlem Renaissance, the literature of post-WWII, and the Renaissance in African American women's writing of the 1970s and 1980s.

Texts: The course will privilege the genre of the novel and will feature the novels of Frances E. W. Harper, Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker.

Particulars: The requirements for this course are three essays, the third of which will be presented within a student-organized conference sponsored by the Alice Walker Literary Society.

A final examination is not required.

Eng 389RWR: Special Topics: West African Fiction and Film
Janis, TT 4:00-5:15, Max: 25 (20) Eng 389RWR/(5) AFS 389WR

Content: Nobel-Prize winning author Wole Soyinka describes “one of the social functions of literature: the visionary reconstruction of the past for the purpose of social direction.” The African novel since the Fifties has, for the most part, followed this description, or prescription, for a politically and socially engaged literature. The objective of this course is to undertake the literary analysis of a diverse selection of acclaimed West African novels of the late twentieth century and to gain an appreciation of their specific contexts—through perspectives in Africana literary criticism and philosophy, history, feminism, and postcolonial theory.

Texts: Chinua Achebe (Nigeria), No Longer at Ease; Chiekh Hamidou Kane (Senegal), Ambiguous Adventure, Buchi Emecheta (Nigeria), The Joys of Motherhood, Wole Soyinka (Nigeria), The Interpreters, Miriama Bâ (Senegal), So Long a Letter, Yambo Ouologuem (Mali), Bound to Violence; critical texts (excerpts) and suggested readings by Soyinka, Achebe, Ngûgî wa Thiong’o, Nnoremele, Irele, Mudimbe, Miller, Appiah, etc.

Films: Abderrahmane Sissako’s Life on Earth (Mali), Adama Drabo’s Taafe Fanga (Mali), Mweze Ngangura’s Pièces d’identitiés (Congo), Ousmane Sembène’s Faat Kine (Senegal), Tunde Kelani, Thunderbolt (Nigeria).

Particulars: One-third of the grade is based upon class participation, including an oral presentation of a critical text on one of the novels, as well as some short response papers on the films and novels. Two-thirds of the grade is based upon two essays.

Eng 399R: Independent Study. Variable credit. (PLEASE NOTE THIS SECTION WILL NOT SATISFY THE WRITING REQUIREMENT).
Dowell, Permission required

GUIDELINES:

1) Independent study normally consists of a project involving independent research and/or creative endeavor. In some cases, a directed reading program may constitute independent study, provided that such reading does not duplicate or closely parallel the content of existing courses. Broad latitude is expected in the nature of the individual topics, but independent study in English should appropriately be concerned in some fashion with the written or spoken word.

2) At a maximum, no faculty member will be expected to direct more than three independent study projects in a semester. The consent or refusal to direct any project rests with the individual faculty member.

3) To pre-register for independent study, a student must have the written permission of a faculty member who has consented to direct and evaluate the student's project. This permission must stipulate the number of credit hours which the student and his or her director have agreed upon as suitable for the project. Such permission is considered tentative until the student's formal proposal in writing has been approved (see next paragraph).

4) To complete registration, students must present a written proposal of their project in duplicate on a form obtainable in the English office. One copy of the proposal must go to the faculty member responsible for directing the project and the other to the Director of Undergraduate Studies. The written proposal should preferably be submitted and approved before or during the preregistration period and in no case later than the end of the semester preceding the student's planned enrollment in 399R. Only rarely, in unusual cases, will a student be allowed to submit a proposal during the drop-add period at the beginning of the semester. Without a written proposal describing the project and what they hope to accomplish in it, students will not be allowed to enroll in English 399R.

5) A student may take up to eight hours of independent study distributed over one or more projects. The eight hours may be used in a single semester or over two semesters.

Eng 399RWR: Independent Study (PLEASE NOTE: THIS SECTION WILL SATISFY THE WRITING REQUIREMENT).
4 hrs. credit
Dowell, Permission required

GUIDELINES:

5) A student may take up to eight hours of independent study distributed over one or more projects. The eight hours may be used in a single semester or over two semesters.

Eng 480RSWR: Seminar in Poetry: Renaissance Poetics and Poetry: Intertextual Relations
Goldberg, TT 10:00-11:15, Max: 15

Content: This seminar for senior English majors will look at intersections in literary production and theorization among and between Edmund Spenser; George Puttenham; Sir Philip Sidney; Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke; and Mary Wroth. The latter three were related to each other, brother, sister and niece. Sidney patronized Spenser, who dedicated his Shepheardes Calender to him and eulogized him in a poem that may have a section written by Mary Sidney; the Sidneys jointly produced a translation of the psalms, and Mary Sidney wrote a poem about their work together. Sidney himself theorized writing in his Defense of Poetry, while George Puttenham, author of the longest treatise on poetic theory in the period, has sometimes been thought to have been a pen name for Spenser, who theorizes poetic practice under a number of names in his work. Sidney dedicated his Arcadia to his sister, named it in her name as The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia; Mary Wroth similarly produced a prose romance under another name and included in it a sonnet sequence, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, modeled on her uncle’s Astrophil and Stella. This course will follow the intricate tracks and crisscrossings of these literary relationships with an emphasis on poetic texts and texts in poetics.

Texts: The texts will certainly include: Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella, Defense of Poetry; Mary Sidney, To the Angel Spirit of . . . .Philip Sidney, The Triumph of Death; Mary Wroth, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus; Spenser, Shepheardes Calender, Astrophel, The Ruines of Time; Letter to Ralegh and a book of The Faerie Queene; George Puttenham selections from Arte of English Poesie.

Particulars: Students in the seminar are expected to attend all meetings; a class report, a short paper, and a longer final paper will be required.

Eng 482RSWR: Seminar in Fiction: The Historical Imagination in the United States
Elliott, TT 1:00-2:15, Max: 15

Content: This is an intensive seminar on the nature of the historical imagination in U.S. fiction from the nineteenth century to the present. We will focus in particular on fantastic histories—novels that deliberately deviate from known historical facts. We will ask what these novels tell us about the role of history in configuring the nation, and what compels us as readers to seek the past in our fiction. The class will be split into roughly equal halves, divided between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and also include an introduction to narrative theory. We will also read other theoretical pieces that ask us to consider the way that historical narrative is told and conclude with a foray into nonliterary texts. Students need not have an extensive background in literary theory, but must be prepared to read a novel per week and to make substantial contributions to the seminar discussion.

Texts may include: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter; Catherine Maria Sedgwick, Hope Leslie; Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court; Pauline Hopkins, Of One Blood; Philip K. Dick, The Man from High Castle; Octavia Butler, Kindred; Maryse Condé, I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem; Philip Roth, The Plot Against America; Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic; Kevin Wilmott, The C.S.A.

Particulars: Any student who enrolls in this class should expect to be a consistent participant in the seminar. Class reading will be a novel of 300-400 pages per week. Multiple class presentations and weekly response writing will be required. The major writing component will be a supervised research project of 15-20 pages.

Eng 483RSWR: Seminar in Criticism and Theory: Animals, Cannibals, Vegetables
Allewaert, TT 4:00-5:15, Max: 15

Content: What is the relation of humans to animals and plants? On what grounds have humans been distinguished from other kinds of anima and what are the philosophical and political implications of marking this difference? After familiarizing ourselves with the traditional philosophical distinctions between humans and fellow lifeforms (i.e., reason, language, memory, religious feeling), we will investigate three discourses that call such distinctions into question. First, we will consider mythologies of cannibalism, paying particular attention to how these mythologies contributed to the projects of colonialism and slavery. Second, we will consider an ecological aesthetic that, from the late eighteenth century to the present, has imagined human subjects as entwined with and even vanishing into vegetable life. Finally, we will consider how advocates of vegetarianism, animal-rights activists, and post-humanist philosophers have attempted to reinvent the category of the animal.

Theoretical texts will probably include: Aristotle, Descartes, Montaigne, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Nagel, Deleuze and Guattari, and Agamben. Literary texts and films may include works by Defoe, Bartram, Wordsworth, Coetzee, Saro-Wiwa, Malick, Ridley Scott, and Reggio.

Particulars: 4 short position papers, one long paper.

Eng 489RSWR: Special Topics for Advanced Study:After the Renaissance: Prose and Politics of African American Writers from 1935-1960
Jackson, M 2:00-5:00, Max: 15

Content: This upper division seminar will examine the chief artistic and political concerns of African American writers from roughly 1937 until 1962. We will examine the writers who moved the African American novel and critical essay from an interest with social realism and political justice in the 1930s and 1940s to concerns with high modernist literary aesthetics during the Cold War era. The class will also discuss the second half of the 1950s and the movement by black artists back toward a politically grounded literary practice.

Texts: We will read books by Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Chester Himes, Ann Petry, J. Saunders Redding, Ralph Ellison, Gwendolyn Brooks, John Oliver Killens, Paule Marshall, and William Melvin Kelley.

Two class sessions will take place in the Woodruff Library Manuscript and Rare Book Library which holds the literary archives of both Killens and Kelley.

Particulars: Students are expected to conduct a class presentation, weekly response papers, and twenty-page research project. This course is by permission of instructor only.

Eng 489RSWR: Special Topics for Advanced Study: The Inner Game—Baseball and the American Imagination
Dowell/White, W 2:00-5:00, Max: 15

Content: Baseball has captured the collective memory and imagination of Americans far more deeply than any other American sport. Bearing witness to its place within American culture, individual writers and filmmakers have been fascinated by the game itself and, in turn, have created representations of it that express diverse visions of American life and human experience. In this seminar, we will examine the imaginative renditions of baseball in selected writings and films. Certain written and visual texts will be paired for examination. We will seek to discover both ongoing themes, ideas, and motifs in the imaginative record of the game as well as the imprint individual artistic works have made on this imaginative record.

Texts: Jeff Silverman, ed., The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told; Roger Kahn, The Boys of Summer; Eric Rolfe Greenberg, The Celebrant; selected stories by Ring Lardner; Mark Harris, The Southpaw; Eliot Asinoff, Man on Spikes; Bernard Malamud, The Natural.

Films: Bang the Drum Slowly; Bull Durham; The Natural.

Particulars: The weekly meetings will primarily build on a dialogue among the students and the two instructors. Overall, students will write two papers, do prepared commentaries on papers by two other students, and be expected to participate actively in all seminar meetings. Students will write one paper (1000-1500 words) dealing with the assigned texts for a given session. These papers will serve as the basis for discussion for this session. For two other sessions, students will be assigned as commentators on another student’s paper and will be responsible for posing questions about it and generating discussion in that session. Students will write a second paper (2000-3000 words) for one of the final four seminar meetings; this paper will develop a topic of your own choosing, relating two or three of the works studied in different earlier sessions.

Eng 489R: Special Topics for Advanced Study: Performance and American Modernisms
Vogel, TT 2:30-3:45, Max: 20 (3) Eng 489R/(13)/AMST 385/(2) THEA 389/
(2) MUSIC 470

Content: In this course, we will explore how various modes of performance shaped and responded to the development of an American modernity. In addition to studying dramatic texts and attending to the theatrical history of the time, we will also explore many of the cultural performances that tend to be neglected when American modernism is framed solely as a literary movement. Subsequently, we will closely attend to performance traditions such minstrelsy and melodrama; vaudeville and burlesque; concert saloons, cabaret, and nightlife performances; Tin Pan Alley, blues, and jazz; expressionism and primitivism; and social and concert dance. By looking at this diverse range of material, we will develop an archive of performances through which to consider how modern American identities and relations have been represented, elaborated, challenged, and (mis)recognized on the American stage. Some questions that will guide our inquiry throughout the semester include: How has performance responded to the rapid and sometimes violent changes that define modern life? How have performers and playwrights, audiences and actors, sought to act as subjects rather than objects of these changes? How are social relations imagined and reimagined on the American stage? How does modern American performance draw from and define itself against traditions of European modernism? How did performers, writers, and directors use theatrical innovation and experimentation to address and redress the conditions of social relations under modernity? As these questions suggest, this course will ultimately address how performance—as a subject and a mode of scholarly inquiry—challenges and extends traditional archives of American modernism.

Texts: Readings may be drawn (in full or part) from the following texts: Robert C. Allen, Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture; Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holliday; David Krasner, A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance, 1910-1927; Lewis Erenberg, Steppin' Out: New Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America; David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements; Kathy Peiss, Working Class Amusements; Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance; Michael Rogin, Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot; Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire; selected plays by Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Angelina Weld Grimke, Elmer Rice, Sophie Treadwell, Susan Glaspell, Marita Bonner, Langston Hughes, Djuna Barnes, and Clifford Odets.

CANCELED 10/30/2006

Eng 489RSWR: Special Topics for Advanced Study: Later Eighteenth-Century Literature—Johnson and Boswell
Brownley, Tu 2:00-5:00, Max: 15 (Permission Required)

Content: English literature from 1740 to 1798, studied through a focus on Samuel Johnson and his circle. The course will focus on Johnson’s life as it is portrayed by James Boswell, the first and greatest of literary biographers, and also on Johnson’s own major writings. Because Johnson and Boswell refused to separate literature from everyday life and were deeply involved in the great events and issues of their times, the course provides an overview of social and cultural life in England during the period—its politics, art, drama, and history.

Texts: Boswell, London Journal; Boswell, Life of Johnson; Greene, ed., Samuel Johnson: The Major Works.

Particulars: Class attendance and participation, weekly one-page response papers, short paper, midterm examination, final paper. Given the seminar format, students should have experience in analyzing literature and writing critical papers.

Please Note: The instructor will be available in 317 Callaway Center North on Monday, October 30, 3:15-4:30; Wednesday, November 1, 1:45-3:00; and Tuesday, November 7, 2:00-3:45 to interview students seeking permission to enroll in this seminar.

Eng 495RWR: Honors Thesis
Dowell, Permission required; honors students only

Particulars: Prerequisites: Admission to College Honors Program and approval of project by Department. See the Director of Undergraduate Studies.

Eng 496R: Internship in English. Variable credit
Morey, Permission required

Maximum number of hours in 496R is 12, but no one internship may count for more than four hours. Please note that internship hours DO NOT count towards the major.

Applied learning in a supervised work experience utilizing skills related to the English major. Open to English majors (seniors or second-semester juniors) with the approval of the internship coordinator.

Particulars: Prerequisite: Submission and approval of application before the end of the add/drop period.

SEE CREATIVE WRITING COURSE ATLAS FOR ENGLISH COURSES WITH CREATIVE WRITING CONTENT.

Spring 2007 Course Atlas