Spring 2024
MWF 10:00-10:50. Dallas Hall 306. Dickson-Carr, D., 2016: LL CC: LAI
This introductory survey of selected novels and short stories emphasizes both ideas of modernity and the historical or cultural contexts that generate these ideas. We study speculative fiction, which comprises such genres as science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, and post-apocalyptic fiction, among others. All of the works we study either imagine possible futures or reimagine the past. We will look at speculative fiction’s history, place the works we read and their authors in historical contexts, and examine how different authors build worlds that allow us to understand our own. Tentative authors: Asimov, Bradbury, Butler, Delany, Philip K. Dick, Gibson, Jemisin, LeGui, H.G. Wells, selections from anthologies.
Required coursework: regular quizzes, written midterm and final exams, 2-3 short response papers, and participation.
ENGL 1363-001—Myths of the American West
W 6:00-8:50. Dallas Hall 306. Levy. 2016: CA, HC CC: CA, HC
This course explores ideas of the West as they first appeared in European culture during the so-called “age of discovery.” It then uses these ideas to focus more specifically on the American West as a zone of cross-cultural exchange between those groups peopling North America. The course raises questions about the primary myths that accompanied this peopling, including native American creation stories, European sagas of conquest and the idea of the “New World” as “Virgin Land,” Turner’s “Frontier Thesis,” “Custer’s Last Stand,” and the many stories and histories that sought to justify Manifest Destiny as a national policy of accumulation by dispossession. In other words, this course is about way more than “Cowboys and Indians,” although we explore the literary genre of “The Western” and the social dynamics that led to its creation.
The course focuses on novels, short stories, essays and films, including, The Virginian (Owen Wister), The Land of Little Rain (Mary Austin), Brokeback Mountain, (Annie Proulx), “Yellow Radio Broke-Down” (Ismael Reed), “The Maypole of Merry-Mount” (Nathaniel Hawthorne), Dime Novels (Ned Buntline), The White Album (Joan Didion), The Searchers (John Ford), Red River (Howard Hawks), and possible others.
Assignments: Frequent quizzes; midterm and final exams.
ENGL 2102-001—Spreadsheet Lit: Excel
M 3:00-3:50. Hyer Hall 106. Dickson-Carr, Carol.
This course introduces Excel 2019 as it is commonly used in the workplace. Students will learn to organize and analyze data, use and link worksheets, create tables & charts, and communicate the results of their analyses in clear, readable prose. Laptops required real-time in the classroom with the latest version of Excel. Students will take the Excel Associates Exam for certification by the end of the semester.
ENGL 2102-002—Spreadsheet Lit: Excel
W 3:00-3:50. Hyer Hall 106. Dickson-Carr, Carol.
This course introduces Excel 2019 as it is commonly used in the workplace. Students will learn to organize and analyze data, use and link worksheets, create tables & charts, and communicate the results of their analyses in clear, readable prose. Laptops required real-time in the classroom with the latest version of Excel. Students will take the Excel Associates Exam for certification by the end of the semester.
ENGL 2302-001—Business Writing
TTh 12:30-1:50. Virginia-Snider Hall 203. Dickson-Carr, Carol. 2016: IL, OC, W CC: W
This course introduces students to business and professional communication, including various writing and speaking tasks. It covers the observation and practice of rhetorical strategies, discourse conventions, and ethical standards associated with workplace culture. The course includes active learning, which means students will attend events on campus and off and conduct a detailed field research project at a worksite. Please note that this course may not count toward the English major requirements and that laptops are required in class. Writing assignments: summaries, analyses, evaluations, letters, reports, memoranda, and individual and collaborative research reports, both oral and written. The priority goes to Markets & Cultures majors. The second and third priorities are graduating seniors and Dedman students, respectively. Text: Kolin, Philip C. Successful Writing at Work, 11th ed.
ENGL 2302-002— Business Writing
TTh 2:00-3:20. Virginia-Snider Hall 203. Dickson-Carr, Carol. 2016: IL, OC, W CC: W
This course introduces students to business and professional communication, including various writing and speaking tasks. It covers the observation and practice of rhetorical strategies, discourse conventions, and ethical standards associated with workplace culture. The course includes active learning, which means students will attend events on campus and off and conduct a detailed field research project at a worksite. Please note that this course may not count toward the English major requirements and that laptops are required in class. Writing assignments: summaries, analyses, evaluations, letters, reports, memoranda, and individual and collaborative research reports, both oral and written. The priority goes to Markets & Cultures majors. The second and third priorities are graduating seniors and Dedman students, respectively. Text: Kolin, Philip C. Successful Writing at Work, 11th ed.
ENGL 2311-001—Introduction to Poetry
TTh 3:30-4:50. Umphrey Lee 233. Rivera. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
ENGL 2311-002—Introduction to Poetry
MWF 11:00-11:50. Dallas Hall 357. Caplan. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
“Poetry is language that sounds better and means more,” the poet Charles Wright observed. “What’s better than that?”
This class will train the students to hear the many sounds and meanings that great poems articulate. In addition to taking in-class exams, we will compose formal imitations, write brief analyses of particular elements of the assigned poetry plus one longer essay, and perform a poem from memory. Also, we will have the pleasure of hearing the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Jericho Brown read his work and discuss it during his visit to the SMU campus. In short, we will spend the semester considering language that sounds better and means more, and, as the poet put it, what’s better than that?
Texts: two recent poetry collections and a course packet provided by the professor.
ENGL 2311-003H—Introduction to Poetry: A Poet-Guided Tour
TTh 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 102. Moss. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
In this course, the poets themselves guide us through the formal elements and literary-historical evolution of English and American poetry. During the first half of the semester, each week will emphasize a different technical or generic aspect of poetry, focusing on a representative poet in each case. We will learn rhythm with William Blake, rhyme with Emily Dickinson, sonnet-form with William Shakespeare, persona with Langston Hughes, free verse with Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg. The second half explores perennial themes: poets addressing and questioning God; poets protesting social injustice; poets in love; poets struggling with age and loss; poets pondering nature, art, and poetry itself. Guest speakers include John Donne, Aphra Behn, John Keats, Robert Frost, W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Gwendolyn Brooks, Seamus Heaney, and many more. Who knew there were so many poets? Come meet them.
Text: The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 6th edition.
Required work: two papers (one short, one longish), regular posts to an online discussion board, midterm exam, final exam, recitation, and the dreaded-at-first-later-beloved creative exercise.
ENGL 2311-004—Introduction to Poetry: Contemporary American Poetry Since 1970s
MWF 10:00-10:50. Dallas Hall 157. Rivera. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
Immerse yourself in the innovative works of critically acclaimed poets hailing from underrepresented backgrounds, poets who challenge conventional notions of poetry with their diverse perspectives and experimental forms. This course invites you to develop crucial analytical skills, engage in lively discussions, and foster a shared language for dissecting poets and their creations. Through hands-on digital humanities tools and captivating assignments, you'll map the rich tapestry of poets' backgrounds, annotate poems online, create a digital archive of underrepresented poets, perform poetic analysis on Twitter, craft video analyses, and even produce captivating poetry reviews via podcasts. Engage with the dynamic voices and ideas that shape contemporary American poetry while honing your digital skills for a comprehensive exploration of this ever-evolving literary landscape. Attendance, participation, and discussion are mandatory, but your journey through the vibrant world of contemporary American poetry will be worth every moment. The two required texts are Contemporary American Poetry (Poulin, et al.) and The New Census: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (Gonzalez and Shapiro).
ENGL 2312-001—Introduction to Fiction: The Gothic Novel
MWF 11:00-11:50. Dallas Hall 157. Sudan. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
Gothic novels were wildly popular in nineteenth-century Britain. Starting with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, published in 1764, and continuing almost unabated until about 1820, the Gothic novel, characterized by gloomy landscapes, graveyards, secrets, ghosts, damsels in distress, mysterious heroes, bleeding nuns, and the like, became the most eagerly consumed genre. Net necessarily restricted by gender—almost as many (and arguably more) women published gothic novels as men—these novels represent not only the taste of the literate public but also reflect with an uncanny exactitude the social and cultural milieu of the late-eighteenth through late-nineteenth centuries. We will explore these contexts and, in the process, will learn about the process of textual and cultural analysis. We will also consider contemporary twentieth-century associations with this genre in Daphne Du Maurier’s novel Rebecca, thinking through the symptomatic changes that turn the gothic into something that reflects our current cultural and political climate.
ENGL 2312-002—Introduction to Fiction: The Campus Novel: The Changing University in Fiction and Film
TTh 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 105. Hermes. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
ENGL 2312-003—Introduction to Fiction: The Campus Novel: The Changing University in Fiction and Film
TTh 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 120. Hermes. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
ENGL 2312-004—Introduction to Fiction: Getting to Know Characters
TTh 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 156. Ryberg. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
We are surrounded by characters. They fill our television screens, populate our books, and appeal to our desires through advertisements and social media. In others’ eyes, we ourselves are something like characters: We are always being “read,” often being slotted into types or categories. How do novels, short stories, and other media make characters seem real? What techniques produce this illusion, and how do our experiences inform how we co-create characters alongside their authors? What do we do with works containing characters who seem implausible to us? In this course, we will try to answer these and other questions by reading a wide variety of texts and coming to know a vast array of characters, both major and minor. Overall, I hope that the course will help us better understand fictional beings, both in terms of their historical particularity and their continuing appeal for us today.
Readings will be drawn from the following: Haywood, Fantomina; Defoe, Robinson Crusoe;Dickens, Oliver Twist; Larsen, Passing; Disch, Camp Concentration; Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness; McCarthy, Blood Meridian; other short readings.
Required work: 4 essays (one written in class), weekly discussion posts, and in-class exercises.
ENGL 2312-005—Introduction to Fiction: Fake Fakes & Surreal Realism
MWF 2:00-2:50. Dallas Hall 156. Hennum. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
What is the difference between fiction and non-fiction? Though the distinction might seem clear cut, this question has frustrated writers of both fiction and non-fiction for centuries. We will investigate this problem by reading work that has intentionally blurred these categories. We will read a diverse array of authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, Roberto Bolano, Franz Kafka, and Vladimir Nabokov, and watch films by Abbas Kiarostami, William Greaves, and Orson Welles, in order to think extensively and intensively about this problem in an effort to unpack it and its significance for readers and writers alike.
Required work: a podcast, some short essays (including take-home midterm and final), and weekly responses.
ENGL 2312-006—Introduction to Fiction: Transgressive American Fiction: Writings from the Margins
MWF 2:00-2:50. Dallas Hall 152. Urban. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
This course examines contemporary fiction written by African American, Chicanx, Indigenous, and Asian American authors working in the U.S. from the sixties to the present. Although we will mainly cover novels written from marginalized positions, we will also explore how white writers, specifically men such as Ken Kesey and David Foster Wallace, often speak for those who exist at the margins. We will consider the ways people of color, LGBTQ+ identities and communities, and persons with disabilities are frequently reduced to stereotypes. We will consider how race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, and class operate within contemporary American fiction while also attending to the ways satire, irony, and narrative perspective can lead toward “transgressive,” “radical,” or “subversive” political strategies for challenging the status quo.
Students can expect to engage with countercultural ideas that undermine conventional ones surrounding “objectivity,” “fact versus fiction,” and “personal responsibility.” We will also ask questions about the relationship between social conditions and representational strategies and, ultimately, what makes a text transgressive or not.
Readings include Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; Kathy Acker, Pussy, King of the Pirates; Percival Everett, Erasure; Tommy Orange, There There; Torrey Peters Detransition, Baby, plus short fiction by David Foster Wallace, Joanna Russ, Phillip Roth, Laurie Weeks, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Viet Thanh Nguyen. Assignments: several short essays, discussion posts, and a final a collaborative project.
ENGL 2315-001—Introduction to Literary Study: Metamorphosis
TTh 9:30-10:50. Clements Hall 325. Roudabush. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAA, W
For over 2000 years, Ovid’s Metamorphoses has inspired poets, playwrights, musicians, sculptors, painters, and artists of all kinds to read, repurpose, and recreate his enduring poem. It remains a classic for its ability to stay modern. Our own modern obsessions with self-transformation, narcissism, idealized beauty, challenges to power, and the mythic status of artists attests to the sustained relevance of not only Ovid’s poem, but also the idea of metamorphosis itself. As we survey literary transformations from the first to the twenty-first century, we will discuss metamorphosis as a principle of the artistic process and of literary study; transformations in literary form, style, and cultural preoccupations; translation, adaptation, and imitation; power and authority; identity and selfhood; gender and performance; and voice and artistry.
Readings will likely include selections from Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Kafka’s Metamorphosis, a sampling of sonnets old and new, and modern Ovidian adaptations and revisions by authors such as Denise Levertov, Margaret Atwood, and Nina MacLaughlin.
Required work: most likely, two essays; a creative exercise; and midterm and final exams.
ENGL 2315-002— Introduction to Literary Study: Modern Enchantments: Literature of Science, Religion, and the Spectacular
MWF 9:00-9:50. Dallas Hall 115. Bax. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAA, W
Edgar Allan Poe’s 1829 “Sonnet—To Science” claimed that science strips life of wonder, excitement, and enchantment. His poem participates in a long history of laments about the disenchantment of the world, the idea that new forms of knowledge, social arrangements, and political relations in modernity have sapped meaning and wonderfrom our lives. But writers have also responded by imagining new ways of thinking about science, religion, and enchantment. This course explores poetry, prose, drama, and film from the nineteenth century to the present that addresses the enchantment (or the lack thereof) in modern life. We’ll develop strategies for interpreting and analyzing these texts, considering what exactly “enchantment” means, the extent to which it is actually real or desirable, and the ways literary artists have imagined recapturing it—including through literature itself.
Likely texts: short fiction by Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Chesnutt; poetry by William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson and Tracy K. Smith; two to three novels including Bohumil Hrabal’s Too Loud a Solitude; and the 2022 film, Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Required work: three papers and a final.
ENGL 2315-003—Introduction to Literary Study: The Absurd
MWF 12:00-12:50. Dallas Hall 153. Fanning. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAA, W
This course approaches the question of absurdity through a selection of literary, philosophical, and critical texts, which may include works by Swift, Kafka, Borges, Camus, Beckett, and Flann O’Brien.
Required work: probably weekly discussion posts, two analytical papers, and a literature review.
ENGL 2315-004—Introduction to Literary Study: Being at Home in America
TTh 12:30-1:50. Dallas Hall 105. Dinniene. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAA, W
When you think of home, do you think of a building, a person, a nation, or something else? American literature and film show us that home can be many things, including a place of freedom or of confinement, a solid reality or a fragile, tormenting dream. This course will examine texts that complicate notions of home, including Ira Levin's novelThe Stepford Wives, Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir In the Dream House, and Spike Lee’s filmDo the Right Thing. We will work together to understand how authors formally attend to and complicate representations of home, and how these representations engage us, trouble us, and make us question what we think we know. What does “home” truly mean? Whatcouldit mean? What can learning to recognize who gets to belong (and who doesn’t) teach us about ourselves and our world?
Required work: several short papers, a midterm exam, and a zine project.
ENGL 2315-005—Introduction to Literary Study: The Writer as the Worldmaker
MWF 12:00-12:50. Dallas Hall 137. Mennella. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAA, W
How does do writers, through nothing more than marks on the page, create something we recognize as a coherent, believable “world”? To answer this question we will explore a variety of texts spanning several centuries, all of which experiment with different ways of bringing the phenomenon of “the world” into focus. Readings will range from Shakespeare through Tolkien (The Hobbit) and William Gibson (Neuromancer), with a mix of other short texts of various genres in between.
Required work: three essays (4-5 pages) with opportunities to revise.
ENGL 2390-001—Introduction to Creative Writing: Notice How You Notice
M 2:00-4:50. Annette Caldwell Simmons Hall 225. Condon. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAA, W
ENGL 2390-002H—Introduction to Creative Writing
Th 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 138. Rubin. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
An introductory workshop that will focus on the fundamentals of craft in the genre of fiction writing. Students will learn the essential practice of "reading like a writer" while developing their own work and discussing their classmates'. At the start of the semester, reading will be drawn from Janet Burroway's textbook Writing Fiction. Later on, students will read published works of short fiction.
Required work: (probably) two short stories, a story revision, and various short writing exercises.
ENGL 2390-003—Introduction to Creative Writing: The Fundamentals of Fiction
TTh 12:30-1:50. Umphrey Lee 117. Hawkins. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
This introductory course focuses on the theory and techniques of fiction and offers you the opportunity to develop your own short stories. At the start of the term, we’ll familiarize ourselves with foundational elements of craft, such as point of view and narrative structure, by reading contemporary short fiction and evaluating the decisions writers make. In the second half of the term, we’ll shift to a workshop format in which we’ll share drafts of our short stories with the class and offer one another feedback. The course will culminate in a substantive revision, or re-imagining, of one of your short stories and a reflection on your creative process. In addition to two short stories, you should expect to write several informal peer review letters and reader’s responses. By the end of the term, you should feel increasingly confident in your ability to communicate both on and off the page. No previous writing experience is required to be successful in this course, just an open mind.
ENGL 2390-004—Introduction to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make
TTh 2:00-3:20. Annette Caldwell Simmons Hall 208. Hermes. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov
This course will explore the fundamentals of creative writing in poetry and fiction. To prepare ourselves to write our own stories and poems, we’ll begin with readings that provide artistic models and stimulate discussion about craft. Together, we’ll identify the “moves” successful pieces of writing make and practice incorporating them in our own creative work.
During the second half of the course, we’ll discuss your original stories and poems in a whole-class review commonly referred to as a workshop. Students will benefit from these conversations as both writer and reader, because each story or poem will present particular challenges in writing that all of us face in our work. With engaged participation, we’ll sharpen our creative, critical, and communication skills.
Readings will include chapters from the textbooks Writing Fiction and The Poet’s Companion, as well as individual stories and poems. Authors include Danielle Evans, Julie Orringer, and Mary Gaitskill in fiction, and such poets as Kim Addonizio, Sharon Olds, Kevin Young, Porsha Olayiwola, Caki Wilkinson, James Wright, Elizabeth Bishop, and others.
Required work: a short story, portfolio of poems, regular workshop response letters to your peers’ work, and a final portfolio of revisions with a reflection essay on your own process.
ENGL 2390-005—Introduction to Creative Writing: Love Letter Poems
MW 3:00-4:20. Dallas Hall 152. Lama. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
It is raining in Santiago
my darling one.
-Lorca
So much of who we are is determined by where we are born and live: language, culture, values, lifestyle, body. The notion of “home” is often associated with the land. Simultaneously, the place is shaped and defined by the people who live there. In this class, we will explore the intricate and complex relationship between the place and the people, and using the fundamental concepts of poetry such as image, metaphor, sound, rhythm, and lineation, we will write poems about places that are intimately linked to our identities.
In the first half of the semester, informed and inspired by the great poets that have come before us, we will learn the basic concepts and skills and write the poems. In the second half, we will workshop them, giving and receiving thoughtful and generous feedback, culminating in a final portfolio. The final portfolio will consist of three significantly revised poems, guided by the knowledge that revision is a long and thoughtful form of writing which often results in radical changes and not just fixing of a few grammatical errors. You may have a considerable amount of experience in creative writing or very little to none. The only prerequisite for this class is that you’ve an interest in writing (and reading, of course)—and the willingness to put in a sincere amount of effort into your craft, for in my humble opinion talent alone—without sustained labor and dedication—has rarely, if ever, produced a great artist.
ENGL 2390-006—Introduction to Creative Writing
TTh 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 138. Rubin. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
An introductory workshop that will focus on the fundamentals of craft in the genre of fiction writing. Students will learn the essential practice of "reading like a writer" while developing their own work and discussing their classmates'. At the start of the semester, reading will be drawn from Janet Burroway's textbook Writing Fiction. Later on, students will read published works of short fiction.
Required work: (probably) two short stories, a story revision, and various short writing exercises.
ENGL 2390-007—Introduction to Creative Writing
TTh 12:30-1:50. Dallas Hall 351. Smith. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
This is an introductory creative writing workshop designed to acquaint students with the various forms of fiction. It also functions as an introductory class in the reading of classic and contemporary short fiction. The class is introductory-level, which means that some people taking it may have no creative-writing experience while others may have significant previous experience writing on their own and/or in-group workshops in high school or elsewhere. There is a large emphasis on revision in the course, since revision is an essential part of the practice of most professional writers. Partly to this end, first drafts of work in the class are never graded. They are expected to be complete and as polished as possible within the time available. About one-third of the class time will be devoted to workshop—i.e., discussions of students’ work—and the other portion to discussion of assigned readings and in-class writing exercises. Each person will have the work critiqued in class during the semester. Each person’s manuscript is up for discussion during workshop.
ENGL 2390-008—Introduction to Creative Writing
TTh 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 101. Smith. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
This is an introductory creative writing workshop designed to acquaint students with the various forms of fiction. It also functions as an introductory class in the reading of classic and contemporary short fiction. The class is introductory-level, which means that some people taking it may have no creative-writing experience while others may have significant previous experience writing on their own and/or in-group workshops in high school or elsewhere. There is a large emphasis on revision in the course, since revision is an essential part of the practice of most professional writers. Partly to this end, first drafts of work in the class are never graded. They are expected to be complete and as polished as possible within the time available. About one-third of the class time will be devoted to workshop—i.e., discussions of students’ work—and the other portion to discussion of assigned readings and in-class writing exercises. Each person will have the work critiqued in class during the semester. Each person’s manuscript is up for discussion during workshop.
ENGL 2390-009—Introduction to Creative Writing: The Shapes of Fiction
T 6:00-8:50. Dallas Hall 116. Farhadi. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
In this course, we’ll read a variety of fictional genres and styles to analyze the particular decisions writers use to give their stories shape. While structure will be our entry point, we’ll also focus on the smaller scale choices writers make in order to develop characters, further plot, and stimulate, satisfy, and subvert expectations in the service of providing a compelling read.
Throughout the course we’ll use critical and creative assignments to develop our craft vocabulary. Students will write their own full-length short stories, which we’ll workshop in the second half of the semester.
ENGL 3310-001—Research and Critical Writing for Literary Studies
MWF 10:00-10:50. Dallas Hall 120. Pergadia.
Note: this course is intended especially for sophomore and junior English majors.
This course introduces students to some of the central debates in cultural and literary studies through foundational texts that formulate our understanding of research methods. The course is geared towards developing skills of close-reading and critical writing. Students will learn how to write and speak about theoretical texts and how to recognize the theoretical assumptions that underlie acts of interpretation. Theoretical approaches include: structuralism, poststructuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminist and queer theory, postcolonial theory, and affect theory. We will ground our analyses within particular literary, visual, and theoretical works, learning how to read cultural production as theory, rather than merely applying theory to selected texts.
Likely primary texts: Eliza Haywood’s “Fantomina,” Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif,” Shailja Patel’s migritude, and Jordan Peele’s Get Out.
Required work: in-class workshops, mid-term exam, group presentations, and final essay.
ENGL 3318-001—Literature as Data
TTh 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 115. Wilson. 2016: LL, TM, W CC: LAI, W
Note: for English majors, this course will satisfy, by petition, one of the two required courses for literature before 1775.
What does it mean to think about literature as a type of data? What new types of literary interpretation might that open up, and what pitfalls might we need to beware of? In this course we will encounter a range of theories and technologies that treat literature as data, from text mining and digital mapping to methods used in creating digital editions of books. During the semester we will work hands-on with rare archival materials to create our own digital edition of a book, thinking about what the benefits are of doing so, but also all of the factors we need to consider as digital creators and curators of literary data. In the process, you will learn several digital methods for analyzing literary texts, and in keeping with the public spirit of digital humanities you will share your new skills through an educational outreach event.
Primary texts: epic poetry by John Milton and his contemporaries, plus some shorter poems and some prose works from the period that have not been republished since the 1600s, of which we will create digital editions. Secondary readings: modern scholarship that considers a range of theoretical, social, and ethical issues raised by digital work in literary studies.
Required work: one theoretical essay, a digital edition of an otherwise-unavailable renaissance book, a final digital project shared via roundtable presentation.
ENGL 3347-001—Topics in American Literature in the Age of Revolutions: The Self and Nature in American Literature
TTh 2:00-3:20. Dallas Hall 157. Torres de Veneciano. 2016: HFA, HSBS, W CC: LAI, W
This class concerns ideas of the self, not in isolation, but as mediating a world in which nature is divinely conceived. We will study these ideas in the art, literature, and philosophy of the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. Central movements we will review include Transcendentalism and the American Sublime. The writings of Emerson, Douglass, Fuller, Martí, Whitman, and the paintings of Bierstadt, Church, Homer, Moran and others will enliven our study. Written assignments are designed to elicit analysis through creativity and reportage.
Required work: midterm, final, and short reflection posts.
ENGL 3360-001—Topics in Modern and Contemporary American Literature: Modern Poetry
MWF 1:00-1:50. Dallas Hall 157. Caplan. 2016: HFA, HD, OC, W CC: LAI, W
During the last one hundred years, poets have modernized the art of poetry. To understand their achievement, we will read and discuss poetry collections written by eight exemplary poets. Assigned poets will include T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, and Jericho Brown. This class will grapple with the large questions that this poetry raises: What are a poet’s responsibilities during a time of rapid social change? What defines artistic originality? Should a poem resist new technologies or exploit the possibilities that they offer?
We will hear one of the poets read his work on campus and enjoy a Zoom conversation with another.
Required work: Three in-class exams, several writing exercises, and a final paper.
ENGL 3384-001—Literature and Medicine
MWF 12:00-12:50. Dallas Hall 156. Pergadia. 2016: HFA, HD, W CC: LAI, W
This course surveys the interdisciplinary field of the medical humanities through an exploration of the relationship between literature and medicine. How do medical genres of writing – from differential diagnosis to case studies – adopt literary forms? How might literary genres, such as the cancer memoir, inform medical practices? Students will gain familiarity with key debates in the field, including the distinction between the medical model of disability and illness and the social model.
Likely readings: Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors, Ann Boyer’s The Undying, Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Hervé Guibert’s To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life, Sarah Ruhl’s Smile.
Required work: discussion posts, in-class group presentations, and final project.
ENGL 3390-001—Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry Workshop
M 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 137. Brownderville. 2016: HFA, W CC: W
In this workshop-intensive course, students will write, revise, and analyze poetry. Discussion will center on the students’ writing and on published work that demonstrates important craft elements. Each student will accumulate and refine ideas for poems in a journal and will present careful first drafts, as well as revisions, of approximately ten to fifteen pages of poetry. In addition, each student will choose a contemporary poet to study intensively and will then conduct a conversation with that poet in the form of text, a podcast, or a video. Readings will include a contemporary poetry anthology such as Gracious (ed. John Poch) and supplementary PDFs provided by the professor. Students will begin to imagine how their own voices might contribute to the exciting, wildly varied world of contemporary poetry.
ENGL 3390-002— Creative Writing Workshop: You Are What You Read
W 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 138. Condon. 2016: HFA, W CC: W
ENGL 4332-001—Studies in Early Modern British Literature: Sex and the City in the 18th Century
MWF 1:00-1:50. Dallas Hall 137. Sudan. 2016: IL, OC
In September of 1666, a few short years after the restoration of Charles II to the throne in England, the Great Fire destroyed four-fifths of the commercial and topographical center of London in three days, and, in the process, destroyed everything that had represented London to Londoners. The social, historical, commercial, cultural, and physical city that had been in place for them was simply gone, and the task of rebuilding, re-imagining, and re-conceptualizing the “city” became the major task of Restoration London. Among the many tasks of social reconstruction Londoners had to face was the changing face of sexual identity: building the modern city on the ruins of the medieval city worked in tandem with building a modern sense of self, including a sexualized and gendered self, on older forms of social and national identity. Charles II, fresh from the French court in Paris, brought with him an entirely different concept of fashion, sense, sensibility, and sexual identity. This course examines the ways in which concepts of sexual—or, perhaps, more accurately, gendered—identities developed as ideologies alongside the architectural and topographical conception of urban life in England. And although the primary urban center was London, these identity positions also had some effect in shaping a sense of nationalism; certainly the concept of a rural identity and the invention of the countryside were contingent on notions of the city. Urbanity, in both senses of the word, is an idea that we will explore in various representations stretching from the late seventeenth-century Restoration drama to the Gothic novel of the late eighteenth century.
ENGL 4332-002—Studies in Early Modern British Literature
TR 12:30-1:50. Dallas Hall 120. TBD. 2016: IL, OC
ENGL 4343-001—Studies in Literature in the Age of Revolutions: Faith, Doubt, and Unbelief in the Nineteenth Century
TR 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 102. Newman. 2016: IL, OC CC: OC
ENGL 4369-001—Transatlantic Studies III: Writing About Fashion: History, Practice, Power
TTh 2:00-3:20. Umphrey Lee 283. Garelick. 2016: HD, IL, OC CC: OC
COMBINED WITH JOUR 5301-001
This course, taught by an SMU professor who is also a Style columnist for The New York Times, is devoted to understanding fashion journalism as first and foremost writing— writing about art, politics, experience, aesthetics, history. Fashion is an integral part of world events, and fashion journalism consists of a multi-faceted world of responses to it. We shall discuss fashion journalism in literature and as literature,
We begin with a look back at the origins of writing about fashion, presumptions about it, some early fashion magazines (dating back to the seventeenth century), and how fashions were presented visually. Then we move on to major themes in fashion journalism, looking at how writers conceive of stories, shape them, create them, and publish them. through fashion reviews, trend pieces, profiles, blogs, vlogs, memoirs, and more. The second half of the term features a series of highly acclaimed guest speakers (writers for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, and more) who will take your questions, discuss their careers, and talk about current events in fashion.
Authors include Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Diana Vreeland, Lynn Yaeger, Alexa Chung, Lindsay Peoples Wagner, and Garance Dore.
Required work: a fashion journal, in which students chronicle their observations weekly, plus write various types of fashion criticism: review essays, article pitches, personal memoir, description, and political and opinion pieces dealing with fashion.
ENGL 4369-002—Transatlantic Studies III: Faith, Doubt, and Unbelief in the Nineteenth Century
TTh 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 102. Newman. 2016: HD, IL, OC CC: OC
ENGL 6330-001— Early Modern British Literature: The Volume of Poetry, 1000 - 2023
T 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 138. Moss
We tend to think of the unit of poetry as the individual lyric, but often there is much more to be gained from perusing the lyric collection, or volume of poetry: from the landmark miscellenies and anthologies that have transformed the way the English language is read, heard, and understood, to the ambitious new poet’s brash self-presentation or the dead poet’s startling reinvention by friends (or frenemies); from volumes that are as much visual art or visionary prose as verse, to collections that seem uncannily to predict the future of literary culture. Then, of course, there are those slim, compact volumes of verse so wise or so cool that you just want to walk around with one of them in the back pocket of your jeans, a new world or second self forever within your reach.
This course, built around one essential volume of poetry per week, is designed to help graduate students gain confidence when working with (and teaching) poetry, with an overall focus on intratextual comparative close-reading—essentially, building constellations of small texts within the larger text of the volume—along with weekly investigations of each volume's peculiar dynamic. Topics covered will include manuscript culture, formal innovation, collaborative composition, aggressive editing and posthumous publication, translation, religious verse, dialect verse, and the axes of interplay between verse and prose, verse and visual art, racial pride and racism, feminism and misogyny, expressive sexuality and homophobia. We’ll read Anglo-Saxon riddles from a 10th-century manuscript, introduce ourselves to the alternate universe of the early modern court masque, design lesson plans around eighteenth-century children’s poems, build a literary genealogy for the world’s greatest villanelle, fall in love with a red wheelbarrow, and discuss Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems while eating a late lunch. Assignments include weekly discussion board posts, one short and one mid-length paper, a creative exercise, a pedagogical exercise, a research portfolio, and a presentation.
ENGL 6370-001—African American Literature: Critical Pasts and the Future
M 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 138. Dickson-Carr, D.
This proseminar will focus on critical issues and debates within African American literary and cultural history, with a particular emphasis on works that imagine possible futures for people of the African Diaspora, whether in freedom or in the farthest reaches of space and time. We will place these works in conversation with African American critical theory from various scholars and critics. Our goal will be to examine how speculation about the future, from the visions of abolitionists, Civil Rights activists, Black Nationalists, Afropessimism, Afrofuturism, Womanism, and Queer movements have forced readers to rethink Black identities and critical strategies. We will begin in the mid-19th century and end in the present, but imagine the future. In the process, we will have an opportunity to read literature of various genres, movements, and perspectives.
Likely texts (final list TBD): Napier (ed.), African American Literary Theory; Gates and Burton, Call and Response (excerpts); Studies in American Humor Fall 2022 issue; selected works by Baker, Baldwin, Beatty, Bell, Bennett, Butler, Coates, Douglass, Du Bois, Due, Ellison, Everett, Gates, L. Guerrero, Himes, Hurston, Jacobs, Jemisin, Mat Johnson, Jones, King, Malcolm X, Davis-McElligatt, B. Manning, D. Fuentes Morgan, Morrison, Obama, Rankine, Reed, Schuyler, Thurman, Whitehead, C. Wright, R. Wright, Walker.
Required work: weekly critical responses; an oral presentation; two conference presentation-length papers (8-10 pages apiece); regular and vocal participation.
ENGL 6373-001—Hispanic American Literature
Th 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 137. González
This proseminar is designed to provide graduate students with an opportunity to critically examine a swath of “Hispanic-American” literature within the larger literary tradition of the United States. The course will emphasize the literary and cultural production of Latinos in the US. While this sounds like a relatively straightforward endeavor, studying Latinx literature is as complex an issue as understanding Latinx identity. Indeed, because Latinx literature has historically arisen out of a searching articulation of this group of Americans, it is necessary to take up issues of history, politics, language, and more when attempting to critically examine this body of literature. We will also emphasize formal issues of our selected readings as we strive to investigate how form and content work with and against one another in Latinx literature. Students should plan to engage in and at times lead productive discussions; hone the skills of writing scholarly book reviews, continue to develop conference presentation skills, and write a final seminar paper aimed at publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
Tentative texts: The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature ed. Ilan Stavans; Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America by Juan Gonzalez; Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino” by Héctor Tobar; Selected readings by Alvarez; Aldama; Anzaldúa; Cisneros; Angie Cruz; Junot Díaz; C. González; J.M. González; The Hernandez Bros; Ada Limón; Islas; P. Moya; Paredes; D.R. Perez; Rechy; Richard T. Rodríguez; R. Saldívar; Justin Torres; and more.
ENGL 6380-001—History of Print Culture
TTh 12:30-1:50. Dallas Hall 138. Wilson
In this class, we will be studying methods of renaissance eloquence including rhetoric and logic through the lens of modern Digital Humanities. If you are interested in learning more about the evolution of the teaching of reading, writing, and literary studies, in gaining the experience of doing hands-on archival work with rare materials, and also acquiring marketable digital and management skills and engaging in some public-facing humanities scholarship, you will have the opportunity to do just that in this course.
We will engage in hands-on archival scholarship, working with a rare book about early modern rhetoric or logic which has not been published in over 200 years, and we will use digital techniques to create an interactive digital edition of that book. Alongside the academic skills of archival scholarship, academic writing, and of course rigourous reading techniques, we will engage in core skills for the modern workplace including project management and team management to bring our digital project to fruition. No previous experience is needed or expected in either digital or archival work, everything you need will be acquired during the course.
We will be visited by several people participating in an international rare book symposium which I am running in June 2024, whose specializations span the histories of rhetoric, print culture, education, theology, and music, and we will have the chance to talk with them directly about their latest work to gain both insights into their erudition and expertise, but also into their academic research processes more broadly.
ENGL 7376-001—Seminar: Special Topics: The Professoriate
W 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 137. Garelick.
What is the literary professoriate? What are we training for and what are our goals? How do we navigate this career in this moment? A “meta-seminar” on the state of literary scholarship and the “profession”—its past and how it has evolved; the history of “literary criticism” as a field; its social and political uses; theories about how to improve it and where it is going. This seminar combines theoretical and historical readings with practical, ‘workshop’ style readings, exercises, and assignments. It will also feature guest speakers discussing their own approaches to these overarching, even existential questions. We shall discuss how to interpret and approach the so-called “job market;” what constitutes (and how to craft) public-facing humanities scholarship; and more. Students will be asked to research and write about their own role models of scholarship; to do short essays in different styles; and to do at least two different oral presentations –one “conventionally scholarly” and one in a more “general, educated audience” fashion.
Texts: work by John Guillory (who will be visiting SMU in February and will come to our class); Mary Beard; David Damrosch; Rita Felski; Henry Louis Gates; Neil Hertz; Alice Kaplan; Hermione Lee; Jill Lepore; Ngugi wa Thiong’o; Marianna Torgovnick; and more. Other speakers TBA.
Cat # |
Sec |
Course Title |
Instructor |
Days |
Start |
End |
Room |
UC Tags |
CC Tags |
1362 |
001 |
Speulative Fiction: Utopias and Dystopias |
Dickson-Carr, D. |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 306 |
2016: LL |
LAI |
1363 |
701 |
Myths of the American West |
Levy |
W |
6:00 |
8:50 |
DH 306 |
2016: CA, HC |
CA, CAA |
2102 |
002 |
Spreadsheet Lit: Excel |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
M |
3:00 |
3:50 |
HYER 106 |
|
|
2102 |
001 |
Spreadsheet Lit: Excel |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
W |
3:00 |
3:50 |
HYER 106 |
|
|
2302 |
001 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
VSNI 203 |
2016: IL, OC, W |
W |
2302 |
002 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
VSNI 203 |
2016: IL, OC, W |
W |
2311 |
001 |
Poetry |
Rivera |
TR |
3:30 |
4:50 |
ULEE 233 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2311 |
002 |
Poetry |
Caplan |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DH 357 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2311 |
003H |
Poetry: A Poet-Guided Tour |
Moss |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 102 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2311 |
004 |
Poetry: Contemporary American Poetry Since 1970s |
Rivera |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 157 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
001 |
Fiction: The Gothic Novel |
Sudan |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DH 157 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
002 |
Fiction: The Campus Novel: The Changing University in Fiction and Film |
Hermes |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 105 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
003 |
Fiction: The Campus Novel: The Changing University in Fiction and Film |
Hermes |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
004 |
Fiction: Getting to Know Characters |
Ryberg |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
005 |
Fiction: Fake Fakes & Surreal Realism |
Hennum |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
006 |
Fiction: Transgressive American Fiction: Writings from the Margins |
Urban |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
DH 152 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
001 |
Intro to Literary Study: Metamorphosis |
Roudabush |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
CLEM 325 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
002 |
Intro to Literary Study: Modern Enchantments: Literature of Science, Religion, and the Spectacular |
Bax |
MWF |
9:00 |
9:50 |
DH 115 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
003 |
Intro to Literary Study: The Absurd |
Fanning |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 153 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
004 |
Intro to Literary Study: Being at Home in America |
Dinniene |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 105 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
005 |
Intro to Literary Study: The Writer as the Worldmaker |
Mennella |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 137 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
001 |
Intro to Creative Writing: Notice How You Notice |
Condon |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
ACSH 225 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
002H |
Intro to Creative Writing |
Rubin |
R |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
003 |
Intro to Creative Writing: The Fundamentals of Fiction |
Hawkins |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
ULEE 117 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
004 |
Intro to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make |
Hermes |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
ACSH 208 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
005 |
Intro to Creative Writing: Love Letter Poems |
Lama |
MW |
3:00 |
4:20 |
DH 152 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
006 |
Intro to Creative Writing |
Rubin |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 138 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
007 |
Intro to Creative Writing |
Smith |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 351 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
008 |
Intro to Creative Writing |
Smith |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 101 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
709 |
Intro to Creative Writing: The Shapes of Fiction |
Farhadi |
T |
6:00 |
8:50 |
DH 116 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
3310 |
001 |
Research and Writing for Lit Stud |
Pergadia |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 120 |
|
|
3318 |
001 |
Literature as Data |
Wilson |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 115 |
2016: LL, TM, W |
LAI, W |
3347 |
001 |
Topics in American Literature in the Age of Revolutions: The Self and Nature in American Literature |
Veneciano |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
DH 157 |
2016: HFA, W |
LAI, W |
3360 |
001 |
Topics in Modern and Contemporary Literature: Modern Poetry |
Caplan |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DH 157 |
2016: HD, HFA, OC, W |
LAI, W |
3384 |
001 |
Literature and Medicine |
Pergadia |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: HD, HFA, W |
LAI, W |
3390 |
001 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry Workshop |
Brownderville |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
2016: HFA, W |
W |
3390 |
002 |
Creative Writing Workshop: You Are What You Read |
Condon |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
2016: HFA, W |
W |
4332 |
001 |
Studies in Early Modern British Literature: Sex and the City in the Eighteenth Century |
Sudan |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DH 137 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
4332 |
002 |
Studies in Early Modern British Literature |
TBD |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
4343 | 001 |
British Literature in the Age of Revolutions: Faith, Doubt, and Unbelief in the Nineteenth Century |
Newman |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 102 |
2016: IL, OC |
OC |
4369 |
001 |
Transatlantic Studies III: Writing About Fashion: History, Practice, Power(cross-listed with JOUR 5301-001) |
Garelick |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
ULEE 283 |
2016: HD, IL, OC |
OC |
6330 |
001 |
Early Modern British Literature:The Volume of Poetry, 1000 - 2023 |
Moss |
T | 2:00 | 4:50 | DH 137 |
|
|
6370 |
001 |
African American Literature: Critical Pasts and the Future |
Dickson-Carr, D. |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
|
|
6373 |
001 |
Hispanic American Literature |
Gonzalez |
R |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
|
|
6380 |
001 |
History of Print Culture |
Wilson |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 138 |
|
|
7376 |
001 |
Seminar: Special Topics: The Professoriate |
Garelick |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
|
|
Cat # |
Sec |
Course Title |
Instructor |
Days |
Start |
End |
Room |
UC Tags |
CC Tags |
2315 |
002 |
Intro to Literary Study: Modern Enchantments: Literature of Science, Religion, and the Spectacular |
Bax |
MWF |
9:00 |
9:50 |
DH 115 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
1362 |
001 |
Speculative Fiction: Utopias and Dystopias |
Dickson-Carr, D. |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 306 |
2016: LL |
LAI |
2311 |
004 |
Poetry: Contemporary American Poetry Since 1970s |
Rivera |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 157 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
3310 |
001 |
Research and Writing for Lit Stud |
Pergadia |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 120 |
|
|
2311 |
002 |
Poetry |
Caplan |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DH 357 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
001 |
Fiction: The Gothic Novel |
Sudan |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DH 157 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
003 |
Intro to Literary Study: The Absurd |
Fanning |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 153 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
005 |
Intro to Literary Study: The Writer as the Worldmaker |
Mennella |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 137 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
3384 |
001 |
Literature and Medicine |
Pergadia |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: HD, HFA, W |
LAI, W |
3360 |
001 |
Topics in Modern and Contemporary Literature |
Caplan |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DH 157 |
2016: HD, HFA, OC, W |
LAI, W |
4332 |
001 |
Studies in Early Modern British Literature: Sex and the City in the Eighteenth Century |
Sudan |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DH 137 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
2312 |
005 |
Fiction: Fake Fakes & Surreal Realism |
Hennum |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
006 |
Fiction: Transgressive American Fiction: Writings from the Margins |
Urban |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
DH 152 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
005 |
Intro to Creative Writing: Love Letter Poems |
Lama |
MW |
3:00 |
4:20 |
DH 152 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
001 |
Intro to Creative Writing: Notice How You Notice |
Condon |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
ACSH 225 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
3390 |
001 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry Workshop |
Brownderville |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
2016: HFA, W |
W |
6370 |
001 |
African American Literature: Critical Pasts and the Future |
Dickson-Carr, D. |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
|
|
2102 |
002 |
Spreadsheet Lit: Excel |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
M |
3:00 |
3:50 |
HYER 106 |
|
|
3390 |
002 |
Creative Writing Workshop: You Are What You Read |
Condon |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
2016: HFA, W |
W |
7376 |
001 |
Seminar: Special Topics: The Professoriate |
Garelick |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
|
|
2102 |
001 |
Spreadsheet Lit: Excel |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
W |
3:00 |
3:50 |
HYER 106 |
|
|
1363 |
001 |
Myths of the American West |
Levy |
W |
6:00 |
8:50 |
DH 306 |
2016: CA, HC |
CA, CAA |
2311 |
003H |
Poetry: A Poet-Guided Tour |
Moss |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 102 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
003 |
Fiction: The Campus Novel: The Changing University in Fiction and Film |
Hermes |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
004 |
Fiction: Getting to Know Characters |
Ryberg |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
001 |
Intro to Literary Study: Metamorphosis |
Roudabush |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
CLEM 325 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
008 |
Intro to Creative Writing |
Smith |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 101 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2312 |
002 |
Fiction: The Campus Novel: The Changing University in Fiction and Film |
Hermes |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 152 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
006 |
Intro to Creative Writing |
Rubin |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 138 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
3318 |
001 |
Literature as Data |
Wilson |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 115 |
2016: LL, TM, W |
LAI, W |
4343 |
001 |
British Literature in the Age of Revolutions: Faith, Doubt, and Unbelief in the Nineteenth Century |
Newman |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 102 |
2016: IL, OC |
OC |
2302 |
001 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
VSNI 203 |
2016: IL, OC, W |
W |
2315 |
004 |
Intro to Literary Study: Being at Home in America |
Dinniene |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 105 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
003 |
Intro to Creative Writing: The Fundamentals of Fiction |
Hawkins |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
ULEE 117 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
007 |
Intro to Creative Writing |
Smith |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 351 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
4332 |
002 |
Studies in Early Modern British Literature |
TBD |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
6380 |
001 |
History of Print Culture |
Wilson |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 138 |
|
|
2302 |
002 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, Carol |
TR |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DH 137 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
2390 |
004 |
Intro to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make |
Hermes |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
3347 |
001 |
Topics in American Literature in the Age of Revolutions: The Self and Nature in American Literature |
Veneciano |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 102 |
2016: IL, OC |
OC |
4369 |
001 |
Transatlantic Studies III: Writing About Fashion: History, Practice, Power(cross-listed with JOUR 5301-001) |
Garelick |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
ULEE 283 |
2016: HD, IL, OC |
OC |
2311 |
001 |
Poetry |
Rivera |
TR |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
|
|
6330 |
001 |
Early Modern British Literature:The Volume of Poetry, 1000 - 2023 |
Moss |
T |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
|
|
2390 |
009 |
Intro to Creative Writing: The Shapes of Fiction |
Farhadi |
T |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
|
|
2390 |
002H |
Intro to Creative Writing |
Rubin |
R |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 138 |
|
|
6373 |
001 |
Hispanic American Literature |
Gonzalez |
R |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 137 |
|
|
Fall 2023
ENGL 1320-001—Cultures of Medieval Chivalry
TTh 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 306. Wheeler. 2016: HC, LL, OC CC: LAI
What is more exciting than the stories of quests and adventures that shape masculine life and heroic literature? We share these stories when we probe the development of chivalric mentalities in the literature, history, and cultures of the Middle Ages, from the flowering of chivalry as ideal and practice in twelfth-century Western culture to its persistent presence in the current moment. Readings and movies include background sources as well as adventure tales of real medieval noble heroes—Rodrigo de Vivar (The Cid, poem and movie) and William Marshal—and those of legend—Lancelot, Yvain, Gawain, and more. Stories from the legends of King Arthur (such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur) provide a mirror through which we can see chivalric education and variation, chivalric seduction and betrayal, chivalric rejection and renewal, and persistence of chivalric ideas in our own lives. This lecture/discussion course requires two structured in-class debates, a mid-term, and a final exam.
ENGL 1330-001—World of Shakespeare
MWF 11:00-11:50. Dallas Hall 306. Rosendale. 2016: LL CC: LAI
Time to (re-)introduce yourself to our language’s greatest writer. In this course, you will meet Shakespeare’s princes, tyrants, heroes, villains, saints, sinners, lovers, losers, drunkards, clowns, outcasts, fairies, witches, ghosts, and monsters. You’ll watch and listen as they love, woo, kiss, charm, hate, curse, mock, fool, sing to, dance with, get drunk with, sleep with, fight with, murder, and haunt each other. You will visit Renaissance England, a place and time as strange, troubled, exciting, delightful, fearful, thoughtful, political, magical, bloody, sexy, and confused as your own. You will read poetry you will never forget, about important issues and ideas, and will better understand and enjoy it.
Our introductory survey will cover plays in all of the major Shakespearean genres: comedy, tragedy, history, and romance, as well as some nondramatic poetry. Background readings, lectures, and films will contextualize Shakespeare’s achievement within Renaissance society and life (and death), engaging the religious, political, cultural, philosophical, and economic debates of that glorious but tumultuous age.
ENGL 1365-001H—Literature of “Minorities”
TTh 2:00-3:20. Dallas Hall 115. Levy. 2016: LL, HD CC: LAI, HD
This course explores questions of individual and collective identities from historical, literary, and contemporary social perspectives. We look closely at the many categories that have come to constitute identity in the US, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and the myriad terms/categories that have come to constitute our cultural conversation about identity, including: “Nation” “Whiteness,” “Blackness,” “White Supremacy,” “Identity Politics,” “Queerness,” “Pluralism,” etc. We examine the ways these identities can be both self-selected and imposed, fixed and/or flexible, transformative an/or disruptive.
Authors will include W.E.B. DuBois, Nella Larson, Philip Roth, Ayad Akhtar, Bharati Mukherjee, and Yuri Herrera.
Assignments: one paper, a midterm and a final.
ENGL 2102-001—Spreadsheet Lit: Excel
W 3:00-3:50. Hyer Hall 106. Dickson-Carr, Carol.
This course introduces Excel 2019 as it is commonly used in the workplace. Students will learn to organize and analyze data, use and link worksheets, create tables & charts, and communicate the results of their analyses in clear, readable prose. Laptops required real-time in the classroom with the latest version of Excel. Students will take the Excel Associates Exam for certification by the end of the semester.
ENGL 2102-002—Spreadsheet Lit: Excel
M 3:00-3:50. Hyer Hall 106. Dickson-Carr, Carol.
This course introduces Excel 2019 as it is commonly used in the workplace. Students will learn to organize and analyze data, use and link worksheets, create tables & charts, and communicate the results of their analyses in clear, readable prose. Laptops required real-time in the classroom with the latest version of Excel. Students will take the Excel Associates Exam for certification by the end of the semester.
ENGL 2302-001—Business Writing
TTh 12:30-1:50. Virginia-Snider Hall 203. Dickson-Carr, Carol. 2016: IL, OC, W CC: W
This course introduces students to business and professional communication, including various writing and speaking tasks. It covers the observation and practice of rhetorical strategies, discourse conventions, and ethical standards associated with workplace culture. The course includes active learning, which means students will attend events on campus and off and conduct a detailed field research project at a worksite. Please note that this course may not count toward the English major requirements and that laptops are required in class. Writing assignments: summaries, analyses, evaluations, letters, reports, memoranda, and individual and collaborative research reports, both oral and written. The priority goes to Markets & Cultures majors. The second and third priorities are graduating seniors and Dedman students, respectively. Text: Kolin, Philip C. Successful Writing at Work, 11th ed. or later.
ENGL 2302-002— Business Writing
TTh 2:00-3:20. Virginia-Snider Hall 203. Dickson-Carr, Carol. 2016: IL, OC, W CC: W
This course introduces students to business and professional communication, including various writing and speaking tasks. It covers the observation and practice of rhetorical strategies, discourse conventions, and ethical standards associated with workplace culture. The course includes active learning, which means students will attend events on campus and off and conduct a detailed field research project at a worksite. Please note that this course may not count toward the English major requirements and that laptops are required in class. Writing assignments: summaries, analyses, evaluations, letters, reports, memoranda, and individual and collaborative research reports, both oral and written. The priority goes to Markets & Cultures majors. The second and third priorities are graduating seniors and Dedman students, respectively. Text: Kolin, Philip C. Successful Writing at Work, 11th ed. or later.
ENGL 2311-001—Introduction to Poetry: Meeting Our Makers
TTh 8:00-9:20. Dallas Hall 101. Wilson. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
The word “poetry” comes from the Greek meaning “to make.” In this course we will traverse a geographically, chronologically, spiritually, and stylistically diverse array of works by “makers” whose poetry gives us new ways of seeing the world. From love poems written in fourth century China and epic tales from ancient Europe and the Middle East through Black poets in twentieth-century America to Instagram poets and songwriters in the twenty-first, we will encounter beautiful, bewitching, and challenging worlds. Over the course of the semester we will become comfortable and familiar with poetry: we will get to know these makers, to understand and appreciate their craft, and revel in the pleasure that great poetry (or sometimes even bad poetry!) can bring. Additionally, we will experience form through writing and recitation. To add in some workplace skills for our digital age, we will create a physical and digital exhibition about “Making Poetry.”
ENGL 2311-002—Introduction to Poetry: Contemporary American Poets
MWF 9:00-9:50. Harold Clark Simmons Hall 107. Rivera. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
By focusing on contemporary American poetry, this course celebrates writers from the margins, writers within academia, and workaday journey poets who experiment with both form and content to document myriad lyrical impulses. Their poetic efforts form a type of call-and-response dialogue that widens concepts of inclusiveness in ways that many view as threatening. In this course, we will annotate, read, discuss, argue the merits and failures of the poems. acquiring shared language with which to discuss poets and their work. As we embrace these newer voices, we will attempt a radical reimagining of what we consider poetry.
ENGL 2311-003H—Introduction to Poetry
MWF 10:00-10:50. Dallas Hall 120. Newman. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
Why bother with poetry? It offers nothing practical or profitable. It’s made of words, but conveys no information. Reading it probably does not make us better people. An individual poem may refuse to offer a “message”; resist efforts to summarize it; and strike us as pointlessly simple or maddeningly opaque. Furthermore, reading poetry demands a focused attention that we may find hard to provide. No wonder poetry sometimes seems alien to us, and provoked even one poet to confess: “I, too dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.” This course proceeds from the conviction that learning to read, talk, and write about poetry sharpens our awareness of how language works, and perhaps even more important, may afford pleasures that grow on us slowly—or all at once. Texts: Helen Vendler’s Poems, Poets, Poetry, plus other poems to be determined. Assignments: three to four short papers of increasing length; a presentation; a recitation; possible brief discussion board postings; occasional short exercises; final exam.
ENGL 2311-004—Introduction to Poetry
MWF 12:00-12:50. Dallas Hall 137. Caplan. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
Poetry is language that sounds better and means more,” the poet Charles Wright once observed. “What’s better than that? This class will train the students to hear the many sounds and the many meanings that great poems articulate. We will gain the skills and the vocabulary to analyze poems more precisely by reading and discussing a wide range of poetry and by writing formal exercises. Finally, we will have the pleasure of hearing two leading poets visit our class via Zoom.
In short, we will spend the semester considering language that sounds better and means more, and, as the poet put it, what’s better than that?
ENGL 2312-001—Introduction to Fiction : Fatness in American Fiction
MWF 9:00-9:50. Annette Caldwell Simmons Hall 225. Dinniene. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
We live in an era in which the meaning of bodily fatness is hotly contested. Is fatness a disease? A moral failing? Simply one of many bodily types? These questions have been raised since at least the seventeenth century, and continue to be taken up today, by the media, the medical industrial complex, police, government, the fat liberation movement, and more. American authors have reflected these debates in their works, to varying ends. This class considers contemporary American fiction, including Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Susan Stinson’s Martha Moody, to see how authors respond to popular notions of the meaning of the fat body. Students will read and analyze assigned texts to understand how authors use narrative to tell stories of fatness that affirm, complicate, and/or resist dominant notions of normative bodies that often take the meanings of fatness and thinness for granted. Some questions we will consider: Why and how do our authors use fatness to create meaning in their texts? How do they affirm or challenge popular notions of the fat body as a marker of race, gender, class, morality, (dis)ability, and national identity? What do our authors want us to do with what we read and learn? Assignments: several short essays, some of which will contribute to a collaborative podcast or to a longer paper at the end.
ENGL 2312-002—Introduction to Fiction
MWF 9:00-9:50. Dallas Hall 120. Hennum. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
ENGL 2312-003—Introduction to Fiction: The Global Novel
TR 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 102. Hermes. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
This course will consider fiction that reflects and responds to the increasing interconnectedness of our globalized world—stories and novels written about, from, and across places outside the U.S. and Britain, including South and Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean. How do writers of global literature balance precise, local specificity with the imperative to connect to a “universal” audience? What is the work’s relation to a shared cosmopolitan ethos? What do terms like globalization, cosmopolitanism, postcolonialism, and world literature mean in the first place?
With these texts and concepts as our foundation for discussion, we will build a set of tools for analyzing and writing about literature, including close reading, awareness of genre, and familiarity with important elements of fiction. We will think deeply about not just what texts say, but how they say it. Finally, reading these works of fiction will help us see our contemporary world in new ways, and better understand our place in it. Readings may include Jean Rhys, Teju Cole, Yaa Gyasi, Mohsin Hamid, Han Kang, and Pitchaya Sudbanthad.
ENGL 2312-004—Introduction to Fiction: Black Southern Writers
MWF 10:00-10:50. Dallas Hall 153. Rivera. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
The South has long held sway in the cultural imagination of the United States. Dogged by such lingering images and ideas as slavery, Jim Crow, Gone with the Wind, and Larry the Cable Guy, the region cannot seem to escape a past riddled with caricatures. In this course we will examine works by Black fiction writers from the South. We will analyze the complexity of their characters, their invocations of place, and their allusions to culture and collective memory. We will see how their explorations of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation trouble old stereotypes and create a place of more than just moon pies and mint juleps. The South, a site of American trauma, has managed to provide a home for writers who love their homeplace fiercely yet remain keenly aware of its faults. Writers studied include Alice Walker, Crystal Wilkerson, Ernest Gaines, Jesmyn Ward, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Zora Neale Hurston, De'Shawn Charles Winslow, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, and Rivers Solomon.
ENGL 2312-005—Introduction to Fiction: The Real Fake
MWF 11:00-11:50. Dallas Hall 357. Cassedy. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
A typical American spends about 1,000 hours a year reading and watching made-up stories in books, TV, and movies. Why do we spend so much time with fake stories instead of true facts? This has never been an easy question to answer, and there have always been some people who think that fiction is bad, because it’s a lie. Yet we keep consuming it. Is fiction necessary because it’s pleasurable? Because it’s educational? Because it tells the truth — maybe a truer, darker, or broader truth than nonfiction will allow? In this class we’ll read fictional stories from the 14th to the 21st century that tackle the “why fiction?” question. We’ll study what these stories have to say about the purpose of fiction, and how they exemplify (or fail to exemplify) their own theories of storytelling. Likely texts include Boccaccio, The Decameron; Rowson, Charlotte Temple; Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude; Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides. Three essays and a final.
ENGL 2312-006—Introduction to Fiction
MWF 2:00-2:50. ULEE 228. Ryberg. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
ENGL 2312-007—Introduction to Fiction: Diverse Voices in Fiction
T 6:00-8:50. Dallas Hall 105. González. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
Examines how underrepresented and marginalized communities are represented in contemporary fiction, including people of color, LGBTQ+ communities, and individuals with disabilities. We will analyze both mainstream and contemporary literary fiction to consider how these representations reflect social realities and cultural contexts. It aims to develop students' skills in literary analysis, critical thinking, and creative engagements with fiction while also fostering an understanding of social justice issues and the importance of representation in literature. Texts include The Color Purple by Alice Walker, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin. Assignments: 2-3 analytical essays, creative exercises, and a research project.
ENGL 2313-001—Introduction to Drama
TR 5:00-6:20. Dallas Hall 157. Garelick. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
Modern drama reshaped our understanding of home and family, bodies and relationships, and what it means to have a personality or be a ‘character.’ This class examines the arc of modern drama, which began in the 19th century and stretched into the 20th, looking at the classic, often startling plays—from several countries—that revolutionized the stage forever, and which continue to be produced the world over. These include: Strindberg’s Miss Julie, a story of a young woman trying to break out of her narrow social world; Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, a re-examination of middle-class marriage; Chekhov’s Three Sisters, about a family undergoing personal and economic crisis; and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, one of the most famous plays of the twentieth century, about the comforts of friendship; the terrors of solitude; and the profound struggle of daily life. In addition to reading the plays, you will watch film and video clips of performances, and learn to ‘read’ the rich variety of interpretations and choices made by actors and directors. Possibilities exist for brief, in-class performance for interested students (acting ability NOT required!). Taught in combined lecture/seminar format. Students will write two short papers plus periodic one-paragraph reading responses. Midterm and take-home essay-form final.
ENGL 2313-002—Introduction to Drama: A History of Western Drama in Three Acts
MWF 10:00-10:50. Dallas Hall 115. Moss. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
From Antigone to Hamilton, the most memorable reflections on human nature and the most provocative critiques of social and political life have taken dramatic form, presented onstage before mass audiences. This trans-historical success is largely the result of the unique nature of drama, which alone fully unites the arts: writing, speech, gesture, and costume at a minimum, but often incorporating song, dance, and related arts, as in ancient Greece or the modern musical. Thanks to drama’s popular appeal, theaters and the troupes acting in them have always been at the heart of Western culture, from the choruses of the Festival of Dionysus to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in London’s Globe to Broadway and its stars. At the same time, drama has lent its powerful voice to social protest and revolution, especially in the twentieth century, as traditional power structures crumbled and empires fell. The course is divided into three “Acts”: the rise of tragedy and comedy in ancient Greece and Rome, the coming-of-age of English drama during the Renaissance, and the radically experimental and socially critical drama of the modern period. Smaller “Interludes” provide short introductions to medieval and eighteenth-century English drama, and the syllabus closes with a brief glimpse of present-day American theater. Additionally, we will be honing our critical writing skills throughout the semester, with three class sessions devoted to the topic.
ENGL 2315-001—Introduction to Literary Study: Pomp and Circumstantial Evidence
TR 12:30-1:50. Dallas Hall 105. Dickson-Carr, D. 2016: CA, W CC: LAI, CAA, W
ENGL 2315 is an introduction to the pleasing art of literary study and to the English major. We will read, contemplate, and discuss poetry, essays, plays, short stories, and novels from different nations and literary traditions to enjoy their many rich complexities. We will begin with different ways of defining literature and literary study, then proceed to examine how and why we read various genres. We will discuss frequently the roles that literature may play in shaping our world. In addition, we will discover and discuss a few of the more prominent issues in contemporary literary studies. By the end of the course, the student should be able to read and write critically about literary works. This skill will serve each student well in other courses in English, but will apply equally well in other disciplines. Our topic, “Pomp and Circumstantial Evidence,” refers to the many moments in our readings in which individuals—whether poets, kings, fools, heroes, or villains—wrestle with and confront the same issues that we will discuss: the sublime; the gap between what we perceive and reality; facts versus fantasy, illusion, or delusion; the eternal and pleasurable challenge of interpretation. Assignments: regular writing (in class and on your own); two critical papers; several short benchmark reading exams. NOTE: We will watch a few selected films outside of regular class time. Tentative texts: James, The Turn of the Screw; Best American Essays of the Century, ed. Joyce Carol Oates; Shakespeare, King Lear; WisÅ‚awa Szymborska, Poems: New & Collected, 1957-1997; Derek Walcott, Omeros; selected poems by Caroline Crew, Kay Ryan, et al.
ENGL 2315-002— Introduction to Literary Study: Strange Passages
MWF 9:00-9:50. Dallas Hall 343. Fanning. 2016: CA, W CC: LAI, CAA, W
This introduction to the discipline of literary studies proposes that we think of literature as a kind of “estrangement device”—a medium meant to shake us out of our ordinary habits of thinking. Over the course of the semester, our minds will warp and bend as we navigate a labyrinth of “strange passages,” covering methods of interpretation and analysis in selected texts spanning a range of historical periods and genres, including lyric poetry, satire, sci-fi/weird fiction, and literature of the absurd. A sampling of authors and texts: Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; stories by Franz Kafka and Flannery O’Connor; George Schuyler’s Black No More, and science fiction by Vonnegut, LeGuin, and/or Phillip K. Dick.
Assignments: short weekly response papers; 3-4 essays approximately 4-5 pages each; a final exam.
ENGL 2315-003— Introduction to Literary Study
TTh 2:00-3:20. Dallas Hall 152. Roudabush. 2016: CA, W CC: LAI, CAA, W
ENGL 2318-003— Literature and Digital Humanities: An Introduction
TTh 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 101. Wilson. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAA, W
What is digital literature? What is the relationship between technology and the humanities? How can technology advance our understanding of language, literature, and culture? These are some of the large-scale questions that we will explore in this course. We rely on technologies such as digital maps, e-books, search engines, and databases every day, and understanding them and being able to work with them is a vital part of preparing for professional life. This course offers a hands-on introduction to using these technologies in academic research to analyze literature, and as well as enhancing your skills in academic work, the skills you learn are of immediate value to employers in the job market.
ENGL 2390-001—Introduction to Creative Writing: Introductory Poetry Workshop
M 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 152. Brownderville. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
Percy Bysshe Shelley once wrote that poetry “purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being. It compels us to feel what we perceive, and to imagine that which we know.” Ezra Pound, more succinctly, instructed his fellow poets to “make it new!” Pound believed that poets should make the world new—and make poetry new—by presenting life in bold, original verse.
In this course, students will write and revise their own poems, respond both verbally and in writing to one another’s work, and analyze published poems in short critical essays. In-class workshops will demand insight, courtesy, and candor from everyone in the room, and will help students improve their oral-communications skills. As this is an introductory course, prior experience in creative writing is not necessary. Students will be invited to imagine how their own voices might contribute to the exciting, wildly varied world of contemporary American poetry.
ENGL 2390-002—Introduction to Creative Writing: The Shapes of Fiction
W 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 343. Farhadi. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
In this course, we’ll read a variety of fictional genres and styles to analyze the particular decisions writers use to give their stories shape. While structure will be our entry point, we’ll also focus on the smaller scale choices writers make in order to develop characters, further plot, and stimulate, satisfy, and subvert expectations in the service of providing a compelling read.
Throughout the course we’ll use critical and creative assignments to develop our craft vocabulary. Students will write their own full-length short stories, which we’ll workshop in the second half of the semester.
ENGL 2390-003—Introduction to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make
TTh 12:30-1:50. Dallas Hall 120. Hermes. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov
This course will explore the foundational aspects of creative writing in poetry and fiction. To prepare ourselves to write our own stories and poems, we will begin by reading published work along with craft essays that talk about how great writing gets made. These readings are meant to provide artistic models and stimulate discussion about craft. Together, we’ll identify the “moves” successful pieces of writing make and practice incorporating them in our own creative work. During the second half of the course, we will discuss your original creative work in a whole-class review commonly referred to as a workshop. If our workshop conversations are successful, you will learn from each workshopped piece whether you are the writer or the reader, because each story or poem will present particular challenges in writing that all of us face in our work. With engaged participation, we will have an opportunity to sharpen both our critical and creative skills.
ENGL 2390-004—Introduction to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make
TTh 2:00-3:20. Dallas Hall 120. Hermes. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov
This course will explore the foundational aspects of creative writing in poetry and fiction. To prepare ourselves to write our own stories and poems, we will begin by reading published work along with craft essays that talk about how great writing gets made. These readings are meant to provide artistic models and stimulate discussion about craft. Together, we’ll identify the “moves” successful pieces of writing make and practice incorporating them in our own creative work. During the second half of the course, we will discuss your original creative work in a whole-class review commonly referred to as a workshop. If our workshop conversations are successful, you will learn from each workshopped piece whether you are the writer or the reader, because each story or poem will present particular challenges in writing that all of us face in our work. With engaged participation, we will have an opportunity to sharpen both our critical and creative skills.
ENGL 2390-005—Introduction to Creative Writing: Love Letter Poems
MWF 12:00-12:50. Dallas Hall 343. Lama. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
Letters are one of the most intimate forms of human communication. A letter privately reveals the sender, the recipient, and their relationship. But what happens if a third person “eavesdrops” on it? And what if that’s precisely the intent of the writer? The Epistolary Poem is a letter-poem where the author intends it to be read by this third person, “the eavesdropper,” in addition to, sometimes even instead of, the addressee. In this class, using the fundamental concepts and skills of creative writing and poetry such as image, metaphor, sound, lineation, and form, we will write letter-poems to our loved ones, a stranger, the dead, the future, and finally to ourselves.
In the first half of the semester, informed and inspired by the great poets that have come before us--Agha Shahid Ali, Emily Dickinson, Seamus Heaney, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Czeslaw Milosz, to name a few--we will learn the basic concepts and skills and write poems. In the second half, we will workshop them, giving and receiving thoughtful and generous feedback, culminating in a final portfolio. The final portfolio will consist of three significantly revised poems, guided by the knowledge that revision is a long and thoughtful form of writing which often results in radical changes and not just fixing of a few grammatical errors. You may have a considerable amount of experience in creative writing or very little to none. The only prerequisite for this class is that you’ve an interest in writing (and reading, of course)—and the willingness to put in a sincere amount of effort into your craft, for in my humble opinion talent alone—without sustained labor and dedication—has rarely, if ever, produced a great artist.
ENGL 2390-006—Introduction to Creative Writing
TTh 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 105. Rubin. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
An introductory workshop that will focus on the fundamentals of craft in the genre of fiction writing. Students will learn the essential practice of "reading like a writer" while developing their own work and discussing that of their classmates.
ENGL 2390-007—Introduction to Creative Writing
TTh 3:30-4:50. Dallas Hall 153. Smith. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
This workshop-heavy course focuses on the craft, structure, and thematic elements of developing short stories. Students will create and critique short literary narratives focused on the elements of fiction. By the end of the semester, students will complete a portfolio including two short stories.
ENGL 2390-008—Introduction to Creative Writing TTh 9:30-10:50. Hyer Hall 102 . Hawkins. 2016: CA, W CC: CA, CAC, W
ENGL 3310-001—Research and Critical Writing for Literary Studies: The World and the Text
MWF 1:00-1:50. Dallas Hall 138. Newman.
ESPECIALLY RECOMMENDED FOR SOPHOMORE AND JUNIOR ENGLISH MAJORS
This course, designed as preparation for more advanced work in the major, explores several key questions: What is a text? What are some of the approaches thoughtful critics have taken in recent years to the analysis of texts? How do we as readers make sense both of texts and of their critics? How, in practice, do we progress from the reading to the written analysis of texts? Our guiding question this semester will be: Do literary texts reflect the world, construct alternative worlds, or in some way create the world? Employs a combination of lecture, discussion group activity, and writing exercises with the goal of refining critical thinking, reading, and writing skills.
Texts: still under consideration, but will likely be drawn from the following: Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities or Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights; poems by Natasha Tretheway and others; possible short play; Bennett and Royle, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism, and Theory as a read-along textbook.
Assignments: Several short papers and exercises, including discussion-posts; 2 papers (one 3-4 pp., one multi-source paper of approx. 7-8 pages; possible midterm exam or short quizzes.
ENGL 3320-001—Topics in Medieval Literature: Fact or Fiction? Paradigms of Truth in Medieval Literature
TTh 9:30-10:50. Clements Hall 325. Amsel. 2016: HFA, W CC: LAI, W
Are you ready to explore fact and fiction in the literature of the Middle Ages? How is it that we make history? And, how do we discern truth? Sounds familiar to us because we are still grappling with questions of real truths vs. fake truths in our everyday lives. This course examines real and imagined medieval histories and legends, including stories of King Arthur and Joan of Arc, so we can learn about medieval paradigms still present in contemporary culture, literature, films, other types of media.
Assignments include: Case Study Reading Responses and Final Research Paper on medieval themes in contemporary culture and media.
Readings include: Joan of Arc: Her Story by Régine Pernoud and Marie Véronique Clin, Le Mort D’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, and The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown.
ENGL 3347-001—Topics in American Lit Age Rev: The Ethics of Democracy: A Moral Paradox
TR 3:30-4:50. Dallas Hall 101. Torres de Veneciano. 2016: HFA, W CC: LAI, W
This class will read some of the most important prose writers from the late-eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries. These writers trained their pens to ethical matters, including the cultivation of character and personality, the tone of social manners, the pursuit of political and social equity, gender and racial equality, and the end of slavery. Such topics, central to literature in the formative period of American democracy, persist in their relevance to this day. Authors we will read include Jane Addams, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Margaret Fuller, José Martí, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Sojourner Truth, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman.
ENGL 3355-001—Transatlantic Encounters III: Possible Futures: Feminist Theory and Speculative Fiction
TTh 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 106. Boswell. 2016: HFA, GE, W CC: LAI, HD, W
What do feminist theory and speculative fiction have in common? Both genres engage with our culture through imaginative critique, using the “possible future” to envision the ways our world could change for the better—or the worse. Feminist thought has often turned to fiction to imagine “what if” and to engage with ideas of sex, gender, and sexuality. In this course, we will examine a variety of speculative texts alongside works of feminist theory. By making our world and assumptions strange to us, these speculative fictions offer a kind of testing ground for many ideas in feminist theory. This course will examine the underlying systems that have shaped our concepts of sex, gender, race, and other categories. Students will end the semester by giving a researched oral presentation over a literary work or film of their choosing.
ENGL 3362-001—African-American Literature: Criticism, Irony, Satire, and the Future
TTh 9:30-10:50. Dallas Hall 156. Dickson-Carr, D. 2016: HFA, HD, W CC: HD, W
At the heart of African American literature lies a spirit of dissent, with authors taking a critical look at American culture as they show the many complexities within African American communities and cultural products. In many cases, wit, satire, and irony—that is, critical humor—help African American authors and their works to raise important and challenging questions for us to explore and answer. This course takes as its premise that argument, opposition, dissent, and an ironic, satirical spirit are the foundation of African American literature and literary study. Dispensing with the myth of a monolithic, homogeneous African American community, we will focus on critical issues and debates within African American literary and cultural history. Our goal will be to examine how these debates appear in the literature, whether implicitly or explicitly. We will begin in Colonial times and move briskly through history, touching upon works that best illustrate our topic. In the process, we will read and analyze autobiographies, short stories, poems, novels, comic strips, graphic novels, and films.
Assignments will include three critical papers, one requiring research; a midterm; a final; in-class
and take-home writings. Tentatively, we will read selections from The Norton Anthology of African American Literature; short stories, essays, and novels by Paul Beatty, Ralph Ellison, Percival Everett, George S. Schuyler, Wallace Thurman, Mat Johnson, ZZ Packer, Danzy Senna, Colson Whitehead, and Toni Morrison; watch such films as Bamboozled, Sorry to Bother You, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and more.
ENGL 3363-001—Chicana/Chicano Literature: Borders, Barrios, and Beyond
TTh 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 152. González. 2016: HFA, HD, W CC: HD, W
Chicana/Chicano Literature: "Borders, Barrios, and Beyond" examines the literary production of Mexican Americans and Chicanas/Chicanos in the United States. By analyzing novels, poetry, and essays, students will explore themes such as identity, belonging, migration, and resistance, and how they are shaped by borders, both physical and metaphorical. Required readings includeThe House on Mango Streetby Sandra Cisneros,Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestizaby Gloria Anzaldúa,Bless Me, Ultimaby Rudolfo Anaya,The Devil's Highwayby Luis Alberto Urrea, andAlways Runningby Luis J. Rodríguez. The course aims to encourage critical engagement with Chicana/Chicano literature and to deepen students' understanding of the experiences and histories that shape these communities.
Assignments: short analytical exercises, a presentation, 2-3 essays, a creative assignment, and a multimedia piece.
ENGL 3390-001—Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry and Song
W 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 152. Brownderville. 2012: CA2, W 2016: HFA, W CC: W
When songwriter Bob Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize in literature, poets and songwriters across the world fiercely debated the appropriateness of the decision. The debate wasn’t only about Dylan and his Nobel Prize. It was really about the relationship between poetry and song. Do song lyrics qualify as “literature”? Are poetry and song distinct art forms, or are they variants of the same form?
This course, which will explore these fascinating questions, will be a cross between a creative-writing workshop and a discussion seminar. In addition to writing songs and poems of our own, we will talk about songs, poetry that partakes of song tradition, and the historical relationship between song and poetry. Along the way, we will study a large array of poets and songwriters such as Adrianne Lenker (Big Thief), Lucki, Joanna Newsom, Hugh Lupton, The National, Benny the Butcher, Lucinda Williams, Hank Williams, Robert Johnson, Leonard Cohen, Emily Dickinson, Tom Waits, and William Butler Yeats. Students will introduce each other to music, producing playlists for the purpose of class discussion. Students need not have musical training or musical skill, though Meadows students focusing on songwriting and performance are encouraged to take the class. Projects will vary in accordance with students’ interests and abilities: some might write song lyrics or lyric poems, and others might compose songs and perform them for the class.
ENGL 3390-002— Creative Writing Workshop: Screenwriting
Th 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 138. Rubin. 2016: HFA, W CC: W
In this course students will present their own screenwriting as well as critique that of their classmates. Alongside these workshops we will analyze exemplary models of the form and study film clips to understand the ways compelling dialogue is written and satisfying scenes are structured. Readings will include such classics as Casablanca and Chinatown as well as newer scripts like Lady Bird and Get Out. ENG 2390 is a prerequisite for this course although Meadows students with a background in dramatic arts are encouraged to seek the permission of the instructor.
ENGL 3390-003— Creative Writing Workshop: Character Development and Plot
TTh 11:00-12:20. Dallas Hall 102. Smith. 2016: HFA, W CC: W
This workshop-heavy course focuses on the craft, structure, and thematic elements of developing short stories. Students will create and critique short literary narratives focused on the elements of fiction, with primary focus on character development and plot structure. By the end of the semester, students will complete a portfolio including two short stories.
ENGL 4333-001— Shakespeare: Fathers and Daughters, Husbands and Wives
MWF 12:00-12:50. Dallas Hall 156. Moss. 2016: HSBS, IL, KNOW, OC, W
At the beginning of Shakespeare’s Tempest, the elderly wizard Prospero declares to his daughter Miranda, “I have done nothing but in care of thee.” So what does she do, and is it for him? While single women (sometimes disguised as boys) drive most Shakespearean comedy, his tragedies and late romances almost always center on the strong, complex, painful attachments of socially subordinate women to domineering men. The outrageous demands of fathers and jealous tirades of husbands elicit a range of extravagant responses from Shakespeare’s embattled female characters, from angelic chastity to bloody vengeance to Machiavellian calculation to playing dead for decades. In this course, we will follow the unequal dance of Shakespeare’s heroes and heroines, alongside contextual readings on gender roles and domestic life from a variety of Renaissance genres, as well as modern criticism.
ENGL 4360-001—Studies in Modern and Contemporary American Literature: Escape Artists Under Fugitive Law
TTh 2:00-3:20. Dallas Hall 137. Pergadia. 2016: HFA, IL, OC
From Henry Box Brown to Harriet Jacobs, Boots Riley to Jordan Peele, Margaret Garner to Sethe, Black escape artists fill the history and imagination of African American art. How do Black escape artists, from those who escaped fugitive slave catchers to those who composed under slavery and carceral capitalism, offer a map and history for how we got trapped, here, in this America, on this sinking ship, this the sunken place, this afterlife of chattel slavery? And how do we find the keys to get out, to build classrooms, multi-racial coalitions, cities, countries, contacts, loving contagions that abolish the schoolteachers who have colonized our minds, settled us into sunken worlds through ships we think of as a part of the American dream that turn instead to the Middle Passage? This course traces escape artists, broadly conceived. We explore escape artists through the African American literary tradition and interrogate how to build classrooms and pedagogy that abolish the Schoolteachers of the world, teaching them to read history not from the master’s pen but from Sethe’s song. How, the course asks, do we imagine making art and building worlds for Toni Morrison’s Pecola, for Jesmyn Ward’s Jojo?
Assignments: weekly in-class writing prompts, two multi-media projects, weekly discussion posts, and an in-class group presentation. NOTE: there will be film screenings outside of regular class time. Tentative texts: Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing, Octavia Butler, Kindred, Jordan Peele, Us, Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, visual art by Kara Walker, Glen Ligon, et al.
ENGL 4369-001— Transatlantic Studies III: LGBTQ+ Writing Before and After Stonewall
TTh 12:30-1:50. Dallas Hall 138. Bozorth. 2016: HD, IL, OC CC: OC
The Stonewall Riots of June 1969 marked the birth of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and the decades since have seen the “coming out” of lesbian, gay, and trans literature as well. We’ll read some of the most influential works by UK and US queer writers from the 1960s to the present, considering the aesthetic, psychological, social, political and other elements. Among issues we’ll explore: the ongoing fascination of stories about growing up, coming out, and sexual discovery; the search for a queer ancestry and the creation of personal and collective histories in textual form; spiritual meanings of queer sexuality, love, drag, disco, and sequins; tensions (and harmonies) between sexual identity and race, ethnicity, and gender; personal and political challenges posed by HIV/AIDS. We’ll consider how artists adapt aesthetic forms to grapple with such things, whether in a coming-of-age novel, memoir, film, or stage play. If this class were a movie, it would get an NC-17 rating: this course requires an adult capacity to think, talk, and write explicitly about sex and the body in an academic context. We will use a Discussion Board to post question and topics for class consideration, and students will collaborate on leading class discussions, reflecting their interests and research outside of class. Writing assignments: shorter and longer analytical papers, including a final research-based paper, totaling 20 pages. Probable texts: Alison Bechdel, Fun-Home; Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man; Cleve Jones, When We Rise; Randall Kenan, A Visitation of Spirits; Tony Kushner, Angels in America; Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name; Mark Merlis, An Arrow’s Flight; Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain; Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.
ENGL 4397-001—Distinction Seminar
MWF 1:00-1:50. Dallas Hall 137. Cassedy
Open by invitation. (Address questions about invitations to Prof. Tim Cassedy.)
This course is required for students pursuing Distinction in English, and its purpose is to help you envision and design a critical or creative project that you will undertake in the spring semester to complete the Distinction program. Your Distinction project is the most extensive and ambitious project that you are likely to undertake in college — and whether a creative writing project or a literary critical project, it will involve considerable planning, research, and preparatory writing. This course will introduce you to advanced research and project management strategies employed by professional writers and critics; provide frequent opportunities for you to share your ideas in progress and draw on your classmates’ collective insights; and yield a detailed plan for the research and writing that you will undertake in the spring with a faculty member of your choice. The syllabus will be partly student-generated, using scholarship and creative writing located by members of the class and relevant to their projects.
ENGL 6310-001—Advanced Literary Studies
F 12:00-3:00. Dallas Hall 120. Sudan
ENGL 6311-001—Survey of Literary Criticism and Theory
W 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 138. Pergadia.
This course introduces graduate students to some of the central debates in cultural and literary theory through foundational texts that formulate or complicate our understanding of the subject. Students will learn how to write and speak about theoretical texts and how to recognize the theoretical assumptions that underlie acts of interpretation. Theoretical approaches include: structuralism, poststructuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminist and queer theory, postcolonial theory; critical race studies, and posthumanism. As we begin to disentangle the meanings of what we mean when we say “I,” we will inevitably analyze the relationships between the subject and subjection, ideology and power, language and authorship, theory and politics. To this end, we will consider the synergy between theories of the subject and contemporary feminist and postcolonial interventions. We will ground our analyses within particular literary, visual, and theoretical works, learning how to read cultural production as theory, rather than “applying” theory to selected texts. The course is geared towards developing skills of close-reading and critical writing.
ENGL 6312-001—Teaching Practicum
F 1:00-3:50. Dallas Hall 157. Stephens.
English 6312 (Teaching Practicum) is designed to prepare graduate students in English seeking a Ph.D. to teach first-year writing at the college level and, in a larger sense, to design, prepare for, and teach college English classes at any level. During the fall semester, in addition to all of the texts assigned on the WRTR 1312 syllabus, students will read and write critical responses to composition theory and the classroom (excerpts from Lindemann’s A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers). Students will also read and discuss Engaging Ideas; The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom (John C. Bean); these texts provide students with an overview of the history of rhetoric and methods for fostering critical thinking and writing. Students will also critically assess, review, and present contemporary criticism of rhetorical pedagogy. Finally, students will keep abreast of current issues in Composition Studies and Academia by reading recent online articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
ENGL 6320-001— Medieval Literature
T 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 157. Wheeler
How is passion (sexual and sacred, love and hate) represented, valued, suppressed, repressed, and transgressed in medieval prose and poetry? How are such representations culturally embedded and historically expressed? We will survey varieties of textual representations of emotions (especially desire and joy) from a few major medieval literary texts that still resonate in our contemporary cultures. We will grapple with the historical, material, and aesthetic contexts of the works themselves. The huge repertoire of chivalric texts from the Middle Ages to the current moment gives central focus to our study.
Process: Since this is a proseminar, my aim is to introduce you to a broad range of texts and some contemporary theoretical frameworks in which we may consider them while remaining sensitive to their own historical and cultural contexts. Each student will develop a strong set of weekly commentaries and take responsibility for amplifying the class resources and the directions in which we wander off our pre-established tracks. This syllabus is thus to some degree provisional.
Texts:
Andreas Capellanus On Love, trans. P.G. Walsh (Bristol Classical Press) ISBN: 978-0715616901;
Chanson de Roland, bi-lingual text ed. and trans. G. Brault, student edition (Pennsylvania State University Press pb, 1984).
Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances, trans. D.D.R. Owen ISBN 978-0345277602;
Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, trans/ed Faletra (Broadview) ISBN: 978-1-55111-639-1;
Heldris of Cornwall. Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance, trans. Sarah Roche-Mahdi (East Lansing: Colleagues Press, 1992) ISBN 978-0870135439;
The Mabinogion, trans. Sioned Davies (Oxford University Press) ISBN-13: 978-0199218783;
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Pearl; [and] Sir Orfeo, trans. J.R.R. Tolkien (Del Rey) ISBN: 978-0345277602
The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, on-line Harvard edition.
Malory, Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. PJC Field (Boydell and Brewer).
ENGL 6330-001— Early Modern British Literature: Eminent Non-Shakespeareans, 1500-1700
CANCELED
ENGL 7374-001— Problems in Literary History: Poetics
M 2:00-4:50. Dallas Hall 138. Caplan.
This class will consider the much-debated question of what defines the art of poetry. We will examine this question historically, with close attention to shifting modern and contemporary arguments. The readings will include canonical statements by poets such as William Wordsworth, T.S. Eliot, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Langston Hughes, as well as recently published scholarship. Together, they will clarify the rancorous debate and its literary and cultural consequences.
Several of the assigned authors (Jonathan Culler, Stephanie Burt, Jahan Ramazani, and others) will meet with the class via Zoom and visit the SMU campus for the conference on poetic form that will be held here in March 2024. We also will consider the poetics that governs the contemporary moment by reading recent poetry collections such as Jericho Brown’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Tradition. (Jericho Brown will participate in the March conference and give a reading.). The poet Maggie Millner will meet the class via Zoom to discuss her celebrated new collection, Couplets: A Love Story. Finally, we will review poetic techniques (meters, forms, etc.) so the students will gain a solid grounding in them. In short, the class will train the students in a subject and methods to understand poetic and generic thinking.
Cat # |
Sec |
Course Title |
Instructor |
Days |
Start |
End |
Room |
UC Tags |
CC Tags |
1320 |
001 |
Cultures of Medieval Chivalry |
Wheeler |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 306 |
2016: HC, LL, OC |
LAI |
1330 |
001 |
Shakespeare |
Rosendale |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DH 306 |
2016: LL |
LAI |
1365 |
001H |
Literature of Minorities |
Levy |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
DH 115 |
2016: HD, LL |
LAI, HD |
2102 |
002 |
Spreadsheet Literacy |
Dickson-Carr, C |
M |
3:00 |
3:50 |
HYER 106 |
|
|
2102 |
001 |
Spreadsheet Literacy |
Dickson-Carr, C |
W |
3:00 |
3:50 |
HYER 106 |
|
|
2302 |
001 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
VSNI 203 |
2016: IL, OC, W |
W |
2302 |
002 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
VSNI 203 |
2016: IL, OC, W |
W |
2311 |
001 |
Poetry: Meeting Our Makers |
Wilson |
TR |
8:00 |
9:20 |
DH 101 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2311 |
002 |
Poetry: Contemporary American Poets |
Rivera |
MWF |
9:00 |
9:50 |
HCSH 107 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2311 |
003H |
Poetry |
Newman |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2311 |
004 |
Poetry |
Caplan |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 137 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
001 |
Fiction: Fatness in American Fiction |
Dinniene |
MWF |
9:00 |
9:50 |
ACSH 225 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
002 |
Fiction |
Hennum |
MWF |
9:00 |
9:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
003 |
Fiction: The Global Novel |
Hermes |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 102 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
004 |
Fiction: Black Southern Writers |
Rivera |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 153 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
005 |
Fiction: The Real Fake |
Cassedy |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DH 357 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
006 |
Fiction |
Ryberg |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
ULEE 228 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
007 |
Fiction: Diverse Voices in Fiction |
González |
T |
6:00 |
8:50 |
DH 105 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2313 |
001 |
Drama |
Garelick |
TR |
5:00 |
6:20 |
DH 157 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2313 |
002 |
Drama: A History of Western Drama in Three Acts |
Moss |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 115 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
001 |
Introduction to Literary Study: Pomp and Circumstantial Evidence |
Dickson-Carr, D |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 105 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, CAA, W |
2315 |
002 |
Introduction to Literary Study: Strange Passages |
Fanning |
MWF |
9:00 |
9:50 |
DH 343 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, CAA, W |
2315 | 003 |
Introduction to Literary Study | Roudabush |
TR | 2:00 | 3:20 |
DH 152 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, CAA, W |
2318 |
001 |
Literature and Digital Humanities: An Introduction |
Wilson |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 101 |
2016: LL, TM, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
001 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: Introductory Poetry Workshop |
Brownderville |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 152 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
002 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: The Shapes of Fiction |
Farhadi |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 343 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
003 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make |
Hermes |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
004 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make |
Hermes |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
DH 120 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
005 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: Love Letter Poems |
Lama |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 343 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
006 |
Introduction to Creative Writing |
Rubin |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 105 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 |
007 |
Introduction to Creative Writing |
Smith |
TR |
3:30 |
4:50 |
DH 153 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2390 | 008 |
Introduction to Creative Writing |
Hawkins | TR | 9:30 | 10:50 | HYER 102 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
3310 |
001 |
Research and Critical Writing for Literary Studies: The World and the Text |
Newman |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DH 138 |
|
WIM |
3320 |
001 |
Topics in Medieval Literature: Fact or Fiction? Paradigms of Truth in Medieval Literature |
Amsel |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
CLEM 325 |
2016: HFA, W |
LAI, W |
3347 |
001 |
Topics in American Lit Age Rev: The Ethics of Democracy: A Moral Paradox |
Torres de Veneciano |
TR |
3:30 |
4:50 |
DH 101 |
2016: HFA, W |
LAI, W |
3355 |
001C |
Transatlantic Encounters III |
Boswell |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 106 |
2016: HFA, HD, GE |
LAI, HD, W |
3362 |
001 |
African American Literature |
Dickson-Carr, D |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: HD, HFA, W |
LAI, HD, W |
3363 |
001 |
Chicana/Chicano Literature: Borders, Barrios, and Beyond |
González |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 152 |
2016: HD, HFA, W |
LAI, HD, W |
3390 |
001 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry and Song |
Brownderville |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 152 |
2016: HFA, W |
W |
3390 |
002 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Screenwriting |
Rubin |
R |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
2016: HFA, W |
W |
3390 |
003 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Character Development and Plot |
Smith |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 102 |
|
|
4333 |
001 |
Shakespeare: Fathers and Daughters, Husbands and Wives |
Moss |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
4360 |
001 |
Studies in Modern and Contemporary American Literature: Escape Artists Under Fugitive Law |
Pergadia |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
DH 137 |
2016: HFA, IL, OC |
|
4369 |
001 |
Transatlantic Studies III: LGBTQ+ Writing Before and After Stonewall |
Bozorth |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 138 |
2016: HD, IL, OC |
OC |
4397 |
001 |
Distinction Seminar |
Cassedy |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DH 137 |
|
|
6310 |
001 |
Advanced Literary Studies |
Sudan |
F |
12:00 |
3:00 |
DH 120 |
|
|
6311 |
001 |
Survey of Literary Criticism |
Pergadia |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
|
|
6312 |
001 |
Teaching Practicum |
Stephens |
F |
1:00 |
3:50 |
DH 157 |
|
|
6320 |
001 |
Medieval Literature |
Wheeler |
T |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 157 |
|
|
6330 |
001 |
CANCELED |
CANCELED |
|
|
|
|||
7374 |
001 |
Problems in Literary History: Poetics |
Caplan |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
|
|
Cat # |
Sec |
Course Title |
Instructor |
Days |
Start |
End |
Room |
UC Tags |
CC Tags |
2311 |
002 |
Poetry: Contemporary American Poets |
Rivera |
MWF |
9:00 |
9:50 |
HCSH 107 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
001 |
Fiction: Fatness in American Fiction |
Dinniene |
MWF |
9:00 |
9:50 |
ACSH 225 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
002 |
Fiction |
Hennum |
MWF |
9:00 |
9:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2315 |
002 |
Introduction to Literary Study: Strange Passages |
Fanning |
MWF |
9:00 |
9:50 |
DH 343 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, CAA, W |
2311 |
003H |
Poetry |
Newman |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2312 |
004 |
Fiction: Black Southern Writers |
Rivera |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 153 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2313 |
002 |
Drama: A History of Western Drama in Three Acts |
Moss |
MWF |
10:00 |
10:50 |
DH 115 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
1330 |
001 |
Shakespeare |
Rosendale |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DH 306 |
2016: LL |
LAI |
2312 |
005 |
Fiction: The Real Fake |
Cassedy |
MWF |
11:00 |
11:50 |
DH 357 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2311 |
004 |
Poetry |
Caplan |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 137 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
005 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: Love Letter Poems |
Lama |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 343 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
4333 |
001 |
Shakespeare: Fathers and Daughters, Husbands and Wives |
Moss |
MWF |
12:00 |
12:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: IL, OC |
|
3310 |
001 |
Research and Critical Writing for Literary Studies: The World and the Text |
Newman |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DH 138 |
|
WIM |
4397 |
001 |
Distinction Seminar |
Cassedy |
MWF |
1:00 |
1:50 |
DH 137 |
|
|
2312 |
006 |
Fiction |
Ryberg |
MWF |
2:00 |
2:50 |
ULEE 228 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2390 |
001 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: Introductory Poetry Workshop |
Brownderville |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 152 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
7374 |
001 |
Problems in Literary History: Poetics |
Caplan |
M |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
|
|
2102 |
002 |
Spreadsheet Literacy |
Dickson-Carr, C |
M |
3:00 |
3:50 |
HYER 106 |
|
|
2390 |
002 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: The Shapes of Fiction |
Farhadi |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 343 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
3390 |
001 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry and Song |
Brownderville |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 152 |
2016: HFA, W |
W |
6311 | 001 |
Survey of Literary Criticism |
Pergadia |
W |
2:00 | 4:50 |
DH 138 |
||
6330 |
001 |
Early Modern British Literature: Eminent Non-Shakespeareans, 1500-1700 |
Rosendale |
W |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 138 |
|
|
2102 |
001 |
Spreadsheet Literacy |
Dickson-Carr, C |
W |
3:00 |
3:50 |
HYER 106 |
|
|
6310 |
001 |
Advanced Literary Studies |
Sudan |
F |
12:00 |
3:00 |
DH 120 |
|
|
6312 |
001 |
Teaching Practicum |
Stephens |
F |
1:00 |
3:50 |
DH 157 |
|
|
2311 |
001 |
Poetry: Meeting Our Makers |
Wilson |
TR |
8:00 |
9:20 |
DH 101 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
2318 |
001 |
Literature and Digital Humanities: An Introduction |
Wilson |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 101 |
2016: LL, TM, W |
LAI, W |
2390 | 008 |
Introduction to Creative Writing | Hawkins | TR | 9:30 | 10:50 |
HYER 102 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
3320 |
001 |
Topics in Medieval Literature: Fact or Fiction? Paradigms of Truth in Medieval Literature |
Amsel |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
CLEM 325 |
2016: HFA, W |
LAI, W |
3362 |
001 |
African American Literature |
Dickson-Carr, D |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 156 |
2016: HD, HFA, W |
LAI, HD, W |
2312 |
003 |
Fiction: The Global Novel |
Hermes |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 102 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
3355 |
001C |
Transatlantic Encounters III |
Boswell |
TR |
9:30 |
10:50 |
DH 106 |
2016: HFA, HD, GE |
LAI, HD, W |
2390 |
006 |
Introduction to Creative Writing |
Rubin |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 105 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
1320 |
001 |
Cultures of Medieval Chivalry |
Wheeler |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 306 |
2016: HC, LL, OC |
LAI |
3363 |
001 |
Chicana/Chicano Literature: Borders, Barrios, and Beyond |
González |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 152 |
2016: HD, HFA, W |
LAI, HD, W |
3390 |
003 |
Creative Writing Workshop: Character Development and Plot |
Smith |
TR |
11:00 |
12:20 |
DH 102 |
|
|
2315 |
001 |
Introduction to Literary Study: Pomp and Circumstantial Evidence |
Dickson-Carr, D |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 105 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, CAA, W |
2390 |
003 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make |
Hermes |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 120 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
2302 |
001 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
VSNI 203 |
2016: IL, OC, W |
W |
4369 |
001 |
Transatlantic Studies III: LGBTQ+ Writing Before and After Stonewall |
Bozorth |
TR |
12:30 |
1:50 |
DH 138 |
2016: HD, IL, OC |
OC |
1365 |
001H |
Literature of Minorities |
Levy |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
DH 115 |
2016: HD, LL |
LAI, HD |
2302 |
002 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
VSNI 203 |
2016: IL, OC, W |
W |
2315 |
003 |
Introduction to Literary Study | Roudabush | TR | 2:00 |
3:20 |
DH 152 |
2016: CA, W |
LAI, CAA, W |
2390 |
004 |
Introduction to Creative Writing: The Moves Writers Make |
Hermes |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
DH 120 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
4360 |
001 |
Studies in Modern and Contemporary American Literature: Escape Artists Under Fugitive Law |
Pergadia |
TR |
2:00 |
3:20 |
DH 137 |
2016: HFA, IL, OC |
|
2390 |
007 |
Introduction to Creative Writing |
Smith |
TR |
3:30 |
4:50 |
DH 153 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAC, W |
3347 |
001 |
Topics in American Lit Age Rev: The Ethics of Democracy: A Moral Paradox |
Torres de Veneciano |
TR |
3:30 |
4:50 |
DH 101 |
2016: HFA, W |
LAI, W |
2313 |
001 |
Drama |
Garelick |
TR |
5:00 |
6:20 |
DH 157 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
6320 |
001 |
Medieval Literature |
Wheeler |
T |
2:00 |
4:50 |
DH 157 |
|
|
2312 |
007 |
Fiction: Diverse Voices in Fiction |
González |
T |
6:00 |
8:50 |
DH 105 |
2016: LL, W |
LAI, W |
Summer 2023
MAY & SUMMER SESSION 2023 COURSES
Cat # |
Sec |
Session |
Course Title |
Instructor |
Day |
Start |
End |
Room |
UC |
CC |
2302 |
0011 |
S1 |
Business Writing |
Dickson-Carr, C. |
M-F |
2:00 |
3:50 |
ULEE 242 |
2016: IL, OC, W |
W |
2315 |
0011 |
S1 |
Introduction to Literary Study: Pomp and Circumstantial Evidence |
Dickson-Carr, D. |
M-F |
10:00 |
11:50 |
DH 138 |
2016: CA, W |
CA, CAA, W |
2311 |
0012 |
S2 |
Poetry |
McConnell |
M-F |
10:00 |
11:50 |
DH 149 |
2016: HFA, KNOW, HD, W |
HD, OC, W |
3367 |
0012 |
S2 |
Ethical Implications of Children's Literature |
Stephens |
M-F |
12:00 |
1:50 |
DH 102 |
2016: IL, OC, W |
W |
MAY & SUMMER 2023 SESSION
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ENGL 2302-0011— Business Writing
M – F 2:00-3:50. Umphrey Lee 242. Dickson-Carr, C. 2012: IL, OC W 2016: IL, OC, W CC: W
This course introduces students to business and professional communication, including various writing and speaking tasks. It covers the observation and practice of rhetorical strategies, discourse conventions, and ethical standards associated with workplace culture. The course includes active learning, which means students will attend events on campus and off and conduct a detailed field research project at a worksite. Please note that this course may not count toward the English major requirements and that laptops are required in class. Writing assignments: summaries, analyses, evaluations, letters, reports, memoranda, and individual and collaborative research reports, both oral and written. The priority goes to Markets & Cultures majors. The second and third priorities are graduating seniors and Dedman students, respectively. Text: Kolin, Philip C. Successful Writing at Work, 11th ed.
ENGL 2315-0011—Introduction to Literary Study: Pomp and Circumstantial Evidence
M – F 10:00-11:50. Dallas Hall 138. Dickson-Carr, D. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
ENGL 2315 is an introduction to the pleasing art of literary study and to the English major. We will read, contemplate, and discuss poetry, essays, plays, short stories, and novels from different nations and literary traditions to enjoy their many rich complexities. We will begin with different ways of defining literature and literary study, then proceed to examine how and why we read various genres. We will discuss frequently the roles that literature may play in shaping our world. In addition, we will discover and discuss a few of the more prominent issues in contemporary literary studies. By the end of the course, the student should be able to read and write critically about literary works. This skill will serve each student well in other courses in English, but will apply equally well in other disciplines. Our topic, “Pomp and Circumstantial Evidence,” refers to the many moments in our readings in which individuals—whether poets, kings, fools, heroes, or villains—wrestle with and confront the same issues that we will discuss: the sublime; the gap between what we perceive and reality; facts versus fantasy, illusion, or delusion; the eternal and pleasurable challenge of interpretation.
Assignments: regular writing (in class and on your own); two critical papers; several short benchmark reading exams. NOTE: We will watch a few selected films outside of regular class time. Tentative texts: James, The Turn of the Screw; Best American Essays of the Century, ed. Joyce Carol Oates; Shakespeare, King Lear; Wisława Szymborska, Poems: New & Collected, 1957-1997; Derek Walcott, Omeros; selected poems by Caroline Crew, Kay Ryan, et al.
ENGL 2311-0012—Poetry
M – F 10:00-11:50. Dallas Hall 149. McConnell. 2016: LL, W CC: LAI, W
In 1910, the poet William Henry Davies complained, “What is this life, if full of care, / We have no time to stand and stare.” In thee levity - three years since then, changes in lifestyle and advances in communication technology—from television to texts to tweets—have nearly destroyed our capacity for standing and staring. Poetry is the antidote. Poetry yields itself slowly. It demands that we silence distractions and pause in our frantic rushing from place to place. In this summer course, we will pursue an immersive, meditative program of standing and staring at a huge range of texts, from medieval Finnish epic to twenty-first-century Instapoetry. We will read poems carefully and insightfully so that we can truly understand and appreciate our objects of study. There are precious few opportunities in this hectic life to stand and stare, and this course is one of them. The authors we include William Shakespeare, John Milton, William Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Countee Cullen, Pablo Neruda, Stevie Smith, and the astoundingly prolific Anonymous.
ENGL 3367-0012— Ethical Implications of Children’s Literature
M – F 12:00-1:50. Dallas Hall 102. Stephens. 2016: HFA, KNOW, HD, W CC: HD, OC, W
This course exams children’s literature with an emphasis on notions of morality and evil, including issues of colonialism, race, ethnicity, gender, and class. To better comprehend the influences and effects of literature for young people, we’ll discuss and research scholarly criticism and popular reception along with the stories. We begin with an examination of moral codes within folk and fairy tales and then move to picture books, focusing on the implications of book bans and changing cultural attitudes toward traditional concepts and values of family and community. The course culminates in an exploration of YA dystopian literature as vehicles for re-envisioning discrimination, class inequities, and personal responsibility. Because of the abbreviated nature of the summer course, students are strongly encouraged to read the course texts before the beginning of the term.