FIRST YEAR SEMINAR

SUMMER 2008 English 1302 Course Descriptions

Criteria: Students will write 18-20 pages (5400-6000 words) of closely graded work distributed over 4-5 formal essays, one of which will be a major research essay. Instructors may assign a number of informal writing tasks over the course of the semester, such as journal entries, free-writing, non-graded essays, drafts, and in-class writing assignments.

ENGL 1302-0011 (Summer One)

ENGL 1302-0021 (Summer One)

Professor: Vanessa Hopper

mailto:vhopper@smu.edu

Your Choice of Nightmares: Gothic Voices and Visions:  The demented and the damned fascinate us.  We are repelled by yet drawn to tales of catastrophe, trauma, and war.  From Edgar Allen Poe to Stephen King, from Edith Wharton to Anne Rice...creators of the sublimely spooky tale have enthralled us for centuries.  What is seductive about these landscapes of horror?  By what methods do they speak to our private fears, our conscious thirst for adventure, and our unconscious desires?  What truths about culture and human nature do they reflect?  These and other questions will be addressed as we explore "the dark side" in a variety of literary and critical texts by Sylvia Plath, Nathanial Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Mary Shelley, Shirley Jackson, Tim O'Brien, Joseph Conrad and others.              

ENGL 1302-0012 (Summer Two)

Professor Pauline Newton
mailto: pnewton@smu.edu

Travel Spaces:  In this course, we will explore how a writer brings virtual and real travel spaces to life for the reader. What deems a text a “travel narrative?” What makes travel writing effective? What writing techniques do “travel” writers use? Even though we’ll read travel narratives, we’ll utilize the elements of argument papers in our writings. For example, we’ll argue how the writer holds—or fails to hold—the reader’s attention. We’ll argue what makes travel writing effective. We’ll also try our own hand at constructing a travel narrative, whether set in Singapore or in the Korean market in Dallas. This class will make use of computer technology and will use Word, the internet, and other computer software to practice writing