ENGLISH 203 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

FALL 2009

Course Title: AMERICAN INDIAN LITERARY MODERNISM

Time: 10:00 MWF

Class #: 15891

Place: 4044 Wescoe

Instructor: EVANS, Steve

COURSE DESCRIPTION: The title of the course suggests a number of questions that we will consider during the semester. For example, by what characteristics, and within what conceptual framework, can one define “American Indian literature”? Is it possible, even proper, to attempt to place this diverse body of texts within the “traditional” scheme of American literature? What features of written Indian texts mark them as literary, and by whose standards? Perhaps more perplexing, what makes these texts modern? Put another way, how does the work of authors such as N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Louise Erdrich compare to the literature now being produced by writers like Sherman Alexie and Thomas King? Paula Gunn Allen has termed this latter group “the third wave of Native writers”--that is, authors who are “more concerned with articulating contemporary Native experience as it is lived than with busting stereotypes or creating ‘authenticity,’ which were the directives of earlier writings.”

Indeed, the term American Indian itself is suggestive of the conflicted nature of modern Indian experience: Can a person be both American and Indian at once? We will see how certain characters embrace or resist the pull of assimilation into mainstream America, while others strive fervently to maintain tribal traditions and heritage; how questions of identity, or “essence,” are complicated by interrelated notions of blood, culture, and race; how, for many contemporary American Indian writers, the past is inseparable from the present--both literally and literarily. Their variety and differences aside, the works we will study nonetheless comprise a body of literature meant to sustain, in Gerald Vizenor’s fine phrase, “postindian warriors of survivance” (emphasis added)--a term that conflates notions of survival and endurance. Required Work: Occasional quizzes and writing assignments; 2 papers; Mid-Term Exam; Final Exam.xam; final exam. Prerequisite: Completion of English 102 or equivalent.

REQUIRED TEXTS: Dept. of English, Composition and Literature, 2009-2010; Louise Erdrich, Tracks: A Novel; Lester Faigley, The Brief Penguin Handbook (3^rd ed.); Thomas King, Truth & Bright Water; N. Scott Momaday, The Names: A Memoir; N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain; John L. Purdy and James Ruppert, eds., Nothing But the Truth: An Anthology of Native American Literature.

Course Title: THE DARK SIDE OF SATIRE

Time: 11:00 TR

Class #: 33571

Place: 107 MS

Instructor: POPE, Nicole

COURSE DESCRIPTION: The primary aim of this course is to study the genre of satire, and more specifically, the subgenre of black comedy, a form of satire that finds humor in the most serious and sensitive of situations. During the semester we will examine our course texts to answer the following: What can writers achieve with satire that they could not otherwise? Why has the genre’s popularity steadily increased since its inception? What are the limitations of this genre? Above all, how can humor be found in the most depressing, unfortunate circumstances? We will focus on a variety of texts from the beginnings of the tradition (“A Modest Proposal”) to more contemporary takes (American Psycho), as well as other media such as films, short stories, advertisements, etc. This semester we will also focus much of our attention on the role of political satire, using contemporary samples like The Colbert Report to aid in our discussions.

REQUIRED TEXTS MAY INCLUDE: Nabakov, Lolita; Heller, Catch-22; Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita; Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; Ellis, American Psycho; Buckley, Thank You for Smoking; Faigley, The Brief Penguin Handbook; and Dept. of English, Composition and Literature.

Course Title: EXPRESSIONS OF YOUTH AND REBELLION

Time: 2:00 MWF

Class #: 15899

Place: 4019 Wescoe

Instructor: ELLIS, Iain

COURSE DESCRIPTION: Expressions of Youth Rebellion is a course that will survey a broad range of contemporary discourse relating to youth culture as an arena of socio-political resistance. Issues of generation, class, race, and gender—within contexts of history and geography—will be central to our textual/cultural analyses. Quizzes, discussions, and focused response essays will revolve around the literature, films, and music that we study in class. In addition, students will be expected to research, write, and present a fully-developed analytical research paper that focuses on a writer of “youth rebellion.”

REQUIRED TEXTS: Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye; Cleaver, Soul on Ice; Thompson, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas; Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle; Carroll, The Basketball Diaries; Ellis, Rebels Wit Attitude: Subversive Rock Humorists; Faigley, The Brief Penguin Handbook; and Dept. of English, Composition and Literature.

Course Title: HOLOCAUST LITERATURE

Time: 11:00 TR

Class #: 15887

Place: 4044 Wescoe

Instructor: McLENDON, M.J.

COURSE DESCRIPTION: Using testimonies of survivors of the Holocaust, this course will cover literature dealing primarily with the death camps and ghettos.

REQUIRED TEXTS: Wiesel, Night; Borowski, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen; Müller, Eyewitness Auschwitz; Delbo, Auschwitz and After; Wyszogrod, A Brush with Death; Rotem, Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter; Volavkova, I Never Saw Another Butterfly; Heger, The Men with the Pink Triangle; Sonneman, Shared Sorrows; Klein, All But My Life; Langyel, Five Chimneys; Blatt, From the Ashes of Sobibor; Faigley, The Brief Penguin Handbook; and Dept. of English, Composition and Literature.

Course Title: HOLOCAUST LITERATURE

Time: 2:30 TR

Class #: 15885

Place: 4023 Wescoe

Instructor: McLENDON, M.J.

COURSE DESCRIPTION: Using testimonies of survivors of the Holocaust, this course will cover literature dealing primarily with the death camps and ghettos.

Course Title: LIFE STORIES AND ETHNOGRAPHY

Time: 1:00 TR

Class #: 15883

Place: 154 Robinson

Instructor: BINGHAM, Jerry

COURSE DESCRIPTION: Whether you’re a university student, a 20 year old actress being chased by paparazzi, a 31year old combat soldier in Iraq, a long-haul truck driver, a stay at home mom, a 25 year old professional athlete, a farmer, or a Dilbert-like office toiler in a cubicle, everyone has a life story. Life stories are often presented as biographies or autobiographies and they can tell us a great deal about the culture that one comes from. Life stories are up close and personal, dealing with the real-life struggles and triumphs of ordinary people. At the same time, life stories inform us about the values, traditions, politics, religion, education, and economic forces that shape each person. In this sense, autobiography and biography become “ethnography,” a field that brings together the life story and culture.

REQUIRED TEXTS: Carter, An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood; Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath; Burgos-Debray, I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala; Faigley, The Brief Penguin Handbook, Dept. of English, Composition and Literature. In addition we may view ethnographically rich films, such as “Last of the Mohicans” or “Blackrobe,” and there will be strong daily discussions focusing on critical issues.

Course Title: THE LITERATURE OF SPORTS

Time: 12:00 MWF

Class#: 15889

Place: 212 Blake

Instructor: WEDGE, Philip

COURSE DESCRIPTION: In the Literature of Sports course students will study and write essays on a significant body of sports literature, examining such topics as sports as character-building, sports hero types, hero-worship in fans, violence in sports, corruption in sports, and so on. Required coursework consists of 4 major Essays (45%), a Mid-term (15%), and comprehensive Final (25%). Homework (15%) includes pop quizzes and short writing assignments. Class participation is also of considerable importance.

REQUIRED TEXTS: Greenberg, The Celebrant; McPhee, Levels of the Game; Odets, Golden Boy; Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner; Wilson, Fences; LaMott, Crooked Little Heart; DeLillo, End Zone; Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly; Schinto, Show Me a Hero; Dickey, Deliverance; Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises; Faigley, The Brief Penguin Handbook; and Dept. of English, Composition and Literature.

Course Title: POPULAR MEMOIR: TRUTH & RECOVERY

Time: 9:30 TR

Class#: 15897

Place: 4019 Wescoe

Instructor: BELL, Samantha

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will focus on what popular memoir is, and how recovery memoir forges its identity among memoirs. This course will actively engage with issues of authenticity, recovery, memory, truth, and form. We will read memoirs, and at points compare them to personal essays, and other forms of creative nonfiction. Papers and projects will be both analytical and creative, forging inroads in order to re-discover what a memoir can be and mean.

REQUIRED TEXTS: TBA

Course Title: TURN OF THE 20^th CENTURY: AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS

Time: 9:00 MWF

Class#: 15893

Place: 4023 Wescoe

Instructor: FERNANDEZ, Teresa

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course involves an in-depth study of works (novels, short stories, poetry, essays, speeches) by several American women writers from the turn of the20th century. I envision this course as an exploration of the American cultural and political atmosphere in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, a time of social unrest and of questioning of the cultural models dominating most part of the19th century. We will explore the intersection of gender, race and class issues in this critical period of American culture: the decline of the Cult of True Womanhood and the advent of the New Woman phenomenon, the proliferation of magazine culture and mass readership, immigration, cultural assimilation and literacy, women’s clubs and class stratification. In order to offer all possible angles of these issues we will read works by women from different cultural backgrounds (Anglo-white, African-American, Native-American, Asian-American, Mexican-American, Hawai’ian), as we try to go beyond the overgeneralizations of a feminist study into the subtle issues of class and race, as well as the risky endeavor of cultural preservation often hidden under the blanket-statement of gender difference.

Work will probably include three/four main writing projects with some research involved, a final examination (essay form) and small group oral presentations on a topic of the students’ choosing.

REQUIRED TEXTS: Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper; Chopin, The Awakening; Sui Sin Far, Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Other Writings (including magazine articles); Harper, Iola Leroy; Mena, Collected Stories of Maria Cristina Mena; Mourning Dove, Cogewea, The Half-Blood; Wharton, The House of Mirth; Faigley, The Brief Penguin Handbook, Dept. of English, Composition and Literature.

*Additional materials on the specific writers and the main topics of discussion will be on Reserve at Watson Library.

Course Title: THE ONCE AND FUTURE HERO

Time: 2:30 TR

Class #: 15895

Place: 4044 Wescoe

Instructor: MARTINEZ, Ann

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will examine the evolution of the hero/heroine in literature and film. Our exploration will begin with some of the principal heroic figures of old, such as Beowulf and King Arthur, and move on to more recent portrayals, like that of Frodo Baggins and Indiana Jones. Discussion will not only focus on their positionality within the heroic canon, but also on the original context of the stories, and the manner in which their representation has changed through time. Close attention will be given to the values/traits read into them/admired of them, as well as the ideological significance they hold for the societies that produced them. Some of the framework used for our analysis will be the theoretical works of Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, and Carol Pearson.

REQUIRED TEXTS: Homer, The Odyssey; Beowulf; Malory, Le Morte Darthur; Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice; Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King; Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Movies watched independently outside of class (may include): Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Star Wars: Episode IV, Kill Bill, Batman Begins.

Course Title: WRITING WITH STYLE

Time: 11:00 TR

Class#: 33569

Place: 1003 Wescoe

Instructor: FARMER, Frank

COURSE DESCRIPTION: Style has been defined variously throughout history—sometimes in mystical or romantic terms (the purest expression of the soul), sometimes in scientific terms (as deviation from linguistic norm), sometimes in moral terms (as sincerity, authenticity, the truth of plain speaking), sometimes in rhetorical terms (style as decorum, or fitness for the occasion), and sometimes even in terms of social etiquette (style as ingratiation). This course will examine some of the different conceptions of style, as well as the ideologies that inform these conceptions. Equally important, this course is intended to help students develop their own writing style. Over the course of the semester, then, students will practice such stylistic virtues as diction, concision, amplification, voice, figurative language, clarity, and readability. Each week, we will devote one class meeting to a stylistic issue, theme, or controversy, and the other class meeting to a workshop designed to give students practice in addressing some aspect of their writing style. Students will be required to write a final paper on a topic related to style, to revise an old paper for stylistic improvement, to keep an in-class journal, and to report on a stylistic interest to other class members.

REQUIRED TEXTS: Trimbur, Writing with Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing, (2nd ed); Faigley, The Brief Penguin Handbook; and English Department, Composition and Literature.