Fall 2010 Courses: 3000-Level

ENG 3033.001: AMERICAN LITERATURE 1945-PRESENT

Instructor: Jeff Turpin
Class Time: TR 9:30 - 10:45 a.m.
Class Location: MB 1.204

Course Description
“One of my students a year or two ago informed me that the twentieth century was like realizing we're all bad actors in a bad  comedy at precisely the same moment as we realize that no one wrote it, no one is watching it, and the only other theater in town is the graveyard.” 
—John Fowles, Daniel Martin.

Two world wars and the decline of colonialism in the early 20th century dealt a fatal blow to human conceptions of special origin and purpose.  The reflexive self-criticism that followed has been labeled postmodernism . . . but what does this term mean?   In this class we will look at the precursors and conditions of postmodernism, and the literature and criticism that characterize the era, including works that defined and dramatized contemporary feminism, post-colonialism, the Civil Rights movement, multi-culturalism, and cultural relativism.  We will also look beyond to see what might define literature and criticism in the 21st century.  Writers will include Arthur Miller, Theodore Roethke, Ralph Ellison, Jack Kerouac, Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter Thompson, Adrienne Rich, Ursula LeGuin, Tony Morrison, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, Leslie Marmon Silko, Joy Harjo, and many others.

Grading will be based on attendance, class presentations, informal short papers, two formal papers, and two exams.

Texts

  1. Course Reader (photocopy)
  2. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.  Jonathan Culler; Oxford UP.  (ISBN-10: 019285383X, ISBN-13: 978-0192853837)
  3. The Norton Anthology of American Literature 1945-present(seventh edition, used copies are fine) (ISBN 978-0-393-92743-6)

ENG 3063.001: AMERICAN LITERATURE 1870-1945

Instructor: Debbie Lopez
Class Time: TR 12:30 - 1:45 p.m.
Class Location: HSS 3.02.24

Course Description
One of the primary avenues explored in this course will be the connection between adventures and financial ventures.  For example, in the first text studied, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,some characters have the freedom to adventure and others are restricted severely by their inability to venture socially, much less financially. Though this course is essentially a survey of American works from 1870 to 1945, it is framed by two works slightly outside of that time frame: Horatio Alger’s (1867) paradigmatic rags to respectability story Ragged Dick and Ann Petry’s parody of that paradigm, The Street (1946), in which a young African American woman follows that formula in struggling to raise her son alone amid the poverty and racial dissonance of late 1940’s Harlem. Alger published around 130 novels promoting Benjamin Franklin’s eighteenth- century prescription for frugality, industry, and intelligence as the keys to American success.  Over 20,000,000 of Alger’s books were printed, and they were in the optimistic days preceding WWI even more popular than in his own time.  Ironically, Fitzgerald’s WWI veteran Gatsby faithfully follows the Alger formula and succeeds—in the criminal underworld.  Students will also have the opportunity to read Chopin’s “new woman” novella TheAwakening  and Hurston’s classic Their Eyes Were Watching God.  

Course Texts

  1. Alger, Horatio, Ragged Dick and Struggling Upward, Penguin
  2. Chopin, Kate, The Awakening, Penguin
  3. Fitzgerald, F. Scott,  The Great Gatsby, Oxford
  4. Hurston, Zora Neale, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Harper  
  5. Petry, Ann, The Street,Houghton Mifflin
  6. Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Bedford.

Course Assignments for Grades
20% Course participation, including a short presentation and frequent quizzes covering not just the assigned readings for the day but also material discussed in the previous day’s lecture; 30% 7-9 page researched paper; 25% midterm; 25% final exam

ENG 3303.001: THEORY AND PRACTICE OF COMPOSITION

Instructor: Linda Woodson
Class Time: MWF 12:00 - 12:50 p.m.
Class Location: MB 1.206

Course Description
“Theory and Practice of Composition” is both a course about directing others’ writing and a course in composition.  As we discuss what you can do to help others improve their writing, you’ll be mirroring these activities in your own writing.  This course satisfies upper-division English credit requirements for English majors and minors and for other students needing upper-division credit in English.  It is also a required course for undergraduate and post-baccalaureate certification in English.

Texts
To be announced

Requirements
Careful reading will be required both of the text you have purchased and of occasional handouts.  Your reading will be assessed in a mid-term examination and a final examination; both may consist of short answer and an essay.  They will count as the following percentages of your final grade:

  • Mid-term examination: 20%
  • Final examination: 20%

In addition, you will have four papers that will count as the following:

  • #1: 10%
  • #2: 10%
  • #3: 20% (with presentation)
  • #4: 20%

ENG 3223.001: SHAKESPEARE: THE EARLY PLAYS

Instructor: Mark Bayer
Class Time: MWF 11:00 - 11:50 a.m.
Class Location: MB 0.224

Course Description
This course will offer a survey of comedies, histories, and tragedies that Shakespeare wrote until approximately 1600. We will pay special attention to the content and form of these texts but also to the original conditions under which they were performed as well as their social, economic, and political contexts, the networks of patronage, readership, and often collaborative authorship that led to their production, as well as their function in today’s literary and cultural marketplace.  Though sometimes regarded as less mature than some of the later plays, this group of plays offers an unparalleled opportunity to trace the development of the burgeoning playwright. 

Requirements
Two examinations and a series of short quizes on the plays

Texts
Stephen Greenblatt et. al, Eds.  The Norton Shakespeare.

ENG 3253.001: THE AMERICAN NOVEL

Instructor: Ralph Millis
Class Time: TR 11:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
Class Location: MB 1.120

Course Description
“The American Novel” provides an opportunity for students to examine a variety of major American novelists and the literary movements within which they wrote.

Objectives

  • Examine the American literary tradition and recognize and understand its various strains—realism, naturalism, psychological realism, etc.—as reflected in the works of a   
    range of important American novelists.
  • Place American fiction in its cultural and historical contexts.
  • Understand and interpret American novels as both works of art and as reflections of the authors’ lives/experiences.
  • Confront a major aesthetic question:  What is the function(s) of the American novel, and, by extension, what is the function of written art?

Course Texts

  1. The Red Badge of Courage  -  Stephen Crane
  2. The Rise of Silas Lapham  - William Dean Howells
  3. Sister Carrie - Theodore Dreiser
  4. Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson
  5. Young Lonigan –Volume One of the Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell
  6. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
  7. Go Down, Moses - William Faulkner
  8. Invisible Man  - Ralph Ellison
  9. Catch-22  - Joseph Heller

Course Assignments for Grades

  • A mid-term examination—200 pts.
  • A final examination—250 pts.
  • An 8-10 page research/critical essay—300 pts.
  • An oral presentation of the research/critical essay—100 pts.
  • A short oral presentation assigned by the instructor—50 pts.
  • Attendance/quizzes/participation in class discussion—100 pts.

ENG 3303.002: THEORY AND PRACTICE COMPOSITION

Instructor: Gail Pizzola
Class Time: TR 9:30 - 10:45 p.m.
Class Location: BB 3.03.22

Course Description
To prepare students to compose in their profession and/or to teach writing, the class will examine composition theory and the way theory informs practice. Application will include work on stylistic choices that lead to clear, effective writing. Additionally, students will reflect on and analyze writings of their peers as well as their own composing process and product. Fulfills an upper division course requirement for English majors/minors and is required for undergraduate and post-baccalaureate teacher certification in English. Prerequisite: Completion of the Core Curriculum requirement in rhetoric. 3 hours credit.

Course Texts

  1. Lindemann, Erika. Rhetoric for Writing Teachers.
  2. Additional text selection pending.

Tentative Course Assignments for Grades
MLA/APA Research activity, annotated bibliography, synthesis essay, review essay, weekly response journals, weekly editing activities, writing assignment design and presentation (final)

ENG 3713.001/WMS 4853.001/AMS 3343.002: TOPICS: MULTIETHNIC LITERATURES OF THE UNITED STATES

Instructor: Annette Portillo
Class Time: MWF 11:00 - 11:50 a.m.
Class Location: HSS 3.04.10

Course Description
(3-0) 3 hours credit. Prerequisite: Completion of the Core Curriculum requirement in rhetoric.
 This course will introduce you to major works by Native American and Chicana writers and examine the role of race in the American experience. Particular attention will be paid to how these writers have manipulated language and literary genres as they construct alternative notions of American identity and write themselves back into history. More importantly, this course will emphasize the importance of the political, cultural and socio-historical context of all readings.

Course Texts

  1. Helena María Viramontes - Under the Feet of Jesus
  2. Gloria Anzaldua – Borderlands/La Frontera
  3. Sandra Cisneros - House on Mango Street
  4. Cherrie Moraga – Watsonville: A Circle in the Dirt
  5. Norma Cantu - Canicula
  6. Zitkala-Sa - American Indian Stories
  7. N. Scott Momaday - The Way to Rainy Mountain
  8. Sherman Alexie – The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
  9. Leslie Marmon Siko - Ceremony
  10. other readings available on BB from E-reserves


Course Assignments for Grades
Required assignments will include: midterm (7p) and final (15p) research essays; quizzes; individual and group presentations; weekly reading responses; weekly discussion board posts on Blackboard; and peer reviews.

ENG 4973.004: NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURE AND LITERATURE

Instructor: Annette Portillo
Class Time: W 2:00 - 4:45 p.m.
Class Location: MB 1.208

Course Description
This seminar will emphasize Native American voices as we read theoretical discourses surrounding American Indian literary and cultural practices. The readings will provide historical and practical lenses through which you can examine your world and your interactions with both the real/lived and imagined/stereotyped perceptions of and about American Indians. We will consider the complexities of indigenous identity through a native-centered perspective and consider the importance of self-representation as we examine historical and contemporary representations of Indianness.  In addition, this interdisciplinary class will ask you to complicate and challenge generic and confining disciplinary boundaries by reading these works within their appropriate historical and cultural contexts. We will also read several autobiographies, ethnographies and life stories and consider a wide range of issues raised by these works. What does it mean to tell a life story?  Whose stories and histories are valued and legitimized and whose are forgotten?  And how can we problematize the binary constructed between the oral and written traditions by complicating our notions of literacy? It is my hope that as a collective group we can grapple and work through the material to develop an intellectual community that is able to skillfully and respectfully debate pressing issues. This class will require that you regularly participate in class discussions. And although some discussions might evoke strong emotions and debate about particular topics, we must remember to respect everyone’s opinions and comments throughout the course. This course does not assume that you will have background in Native American Studies.

Course Assignments for Grades
Required assignments will include: midterm (12p) and final (20p) research essays; quizzes; individual and group presentations; weekly reading responses; weekly discussion board posts on Blackboard; and peer reviews.

Course Texts

  1. Delfina Cuero -- Her Autobiography An Account of Her Last Years and Her Ethnobotanic Contributions as told to Florence Connolly Shipek
  2. Zitkala-Sa -- American Indian Stories
  3. Linda Hogan -- The Woman Who Watches Over the World
  4. Leslie Silko – Ceremony
  5. Leanne Howe – Evidence of Red
  6. Joy Harjo and Gloria Bird – Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Contemporary Native Women’s Writings of North America
  7. N. Scott Momaday - The Way to Rainy Mountain 
  8. Sherman Alexie – The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

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