ENGLISH 203 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
SPRING 2008
Course Title: AMERICAN INDIAN LITERARY MODERNISM
Time:
Class #: 56413
Place: 4025 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. Prerequisite: Completion of English 102 or equivalent. Required
work: Occasional quizzes and
in-class writing assignments; 2 papers, Mid-Term Exam; Final Exam.
REQUIRED TEXTS: Dept. of English, Composition &
Literature 2007-2008; Louise Erdrich, Tracks: A Novel; Thomas King, Truth
& Bright Water; Andrea A. Lunsford, The Everyday Writer (3rd
ed.); 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: CREATIVE NONFICTION: AN EXPLORATION OF MEMOIR
Time:
Class #: 82179
Place: 4051 Wescoe
Instructor: GLOVER, Angela
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Creative
Nonfiction An Exploration of Memoir,
will be a study of the essay, with an emphasis on autobiographical
writing. This course will introduce
students to literary nonfiction writing--specifically the writing of
memoir. Students will analyze and
synthesize readings in order to create their own work. They will be introduced to writing techniques
and characteristics of the form, which they will utilize in the three pieces
they will write during the semester. The
format of the class will consist of large group discussions, large and small
group workshops, and small group/individual conferences. There will be a publication component within
the course where students will be required to research possible
journals/sources for the publication of their work. This course fulfills the Creative Writing
Requirement.
REQUIRED TEXTS: eds. Dillard/Conley, Modern American
Memoirs; Zinsser, Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir;
Tobias Wolff, This Boys Life; Lamott, Operating Instructions;
Eakin, How Our Lives Become Stories; Lunsford, The Everyday Writer;
and Dept. of English, Composition and Literature.
Course Title: A DANGEROUS ESCAPE: YOUNG ADULT FANTASY
Time:
Class#: 75713
Place: 107 MS
Instructor: HALL, Emily
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this class, we will explore the subversive and socially conscious themes of a variety of popular young adult fantasies. Fantasy writers frequently critique current society through dystopic renditions of our world in which its bad qualities are magnified. They also create alternate worlds that function as a haven for young misfit protagonists (and readers) who are not accepted in the real world. Heroes and heroines in this genre never succeed by following authority; they must resist orders and break conventions in order to save the day. We will analyze how this genre addresses topics such as religious fundamentalism, privilege, gender expectations, authoritarianism, morality, and politics. Major assignments may include a compare/contrast analytical paper, a creative piece, and an investigative paper in which students select a reading or author to explore in more detail.
REQUIRED TEXTS: Pullman, The Golden Compass; L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time; Le Guin,
Gifts; Shetterly, Elsewhere; J.K.
Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; Farmer, The Ear,
the Eye, and the Arm; Gaiman, Neverwhere;
Block, The Rose and The Beast: Fairy Tales Retold; Smith, Bone Volume
1: Out From Boneville; Morrison, All Star
Superman Vol. 1; Lunsford, The Everyday Writer; and Dept. of
English, Composition and Literature.
Course Title: THE DARK SIDE OF SATIRE
Time:
Class #: 56425
Place: 155 Robinson
Instructor: POPE, Nicole
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Are murder, disease, mutilation, and death fodder for comedy? Writers and fans of dark humor would resoundingly say yes. This class will explore dark humor, or black comedy, a genre in which serious topics become humorous in the right context. Like satire, dark humor often serves as social and political commentary. Such writers point out the often ludicrous and arbitrary aspects of our lives, and suggest that sometimes we cannot escape fate. As Kurt Vonnegut writes in Slaughterhouse-Five, “So it goes.” As we examine the course texts, we will ask ourselves the following: What can writers achieve with satire that they could not otherwise convey? Why has the genre increased in popularity in recent years? What does this popularity say about our current values, sense of humor, and taste levels? 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 to more contemporary takes on the genre. Along with the required literature we will look at films, cartoons, and other media to analyze the inner workings of this controversial humor.
REQUIRED TEXTS MAY
INCLUDE: Kesselring, Arsenic and Old Lace; Heller, Catch-22; Vonnegut, Slaughter-House Five; Thompson, Fear and Loathing in
Course Title: DIAGNOSING THE “MODERN CONDITION”
Time:
Class #: 56427
Place: 2032
Instructor: NOGGLE, Richard
COURSE
DESCRIPTION: Walker Percy, Southern novelist and medical
doctor, often spoke of the modern condition as one of “malaise.” This course examines how other writers have
“diagnosed” the various illnesses of the modern world. The course is bookended
by two “apocalyptic” visions: T.S.
Eliot’s 1922 epic poem The Waste Land
and Cormac McCarthy’s recent The Road. In between, some
of the “diseases” considered will be war and madness (Joseph Heller’s Catch-22), suburban identity crises in
literature and film (Rick Moody’s The Ice
Storm and Sam Mendes’ American Beauty),
rampant consumerism, media-saturation, and environmental catastrophe (Don DeLillo’s White Noise
and the short stories of George Saunders), Reagan-era politics and the AIDS
crisis (Tony Kushner’s Angels in America),
the racism of America past and present (Colson Whitehead’s John Henry Days), and the fear and paranoia of post 9/11 America
(Deborah Eisenberg’s “Twilight of the Superheroes”). Despite the dire subject matter, note that
many of the texts are satirical and quite funny.
REQUIRED TEXTS: T.S.
Eliot, The Waste Land; Walker Percy, The Thanatos
Syndrome; Joseph Heller, Catch-22; Rick Moody, The Ice Storm;
Don DeLillo, White Noise; Tony Kushner, Angels
in America; Colson Whitehead, John Henry Days; George Saunder, Pastoralia;
Deborah Eisenberg, Twilight of the Superheroes; Cormac
McCarthy, The Road; Lunsford, The Everyday Writer; and Dept. of English, Composition
and Literature.
Course Title: EXPRESSIONS OF YOUTH AND REBELLION
Time:
Class #: 17753
Place: 4025 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, J.D., The Catcher in the Rye;
Cleaver, Eldridge, Soul on Ice; Thompson, Hunter S., Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas;
Brown, Rita Mae, Rubyfruit Jungle; Carroll, Jim, The Basketball
Diaries, Lunsford, Andrea, The Everyday Writer; and Dept. of
English, Composition and Literature.
Course Title: HOLOCAUST LITERATURE
Time:
Class #: 56429
Place: 4051 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; Mueller, Eyewitness Auschwitz;
Wyszogrod, A Brush with Death; Klein, All But My Life; Heger, The
Men with the Pink Triangle; Sonneman, Shared Sorrows; Delbo, Auschwitz
and After; and Volavkova, I Never Say Another Butterfly; Lunsford, The
Everyday Writer; and Dept. of English, Composition and Literature.
Course Title: LITERATURE OF ECOLOGY
Time:
Class#: 56419
Place: 144 JRP
Instructor:
COURSE DESCRIPTION: We are more aware than ever of our impact on
the natural world and our need to preserve the resources of our planet. Some writers have addressed this need in the
past and many more are doing so in the present, some theoretically and
scientifically, and others through creative writing. This course will introduce
students to some of these writings and provide a forum for discussing the
environmental concerns of the writers as well as our own. Texts will include two Pulitzer Prize-winning
books, one of essays and one of poetry; two novels; and three theoretical
works. Writing assignments will include
four essays, the final one focusing on an independent research project,
including an oral report related to that research.
REQUIRED TEXTS: Mary Oliver, American Primitive;
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; Daniel Quinn, Ishmael;
Wendell Berry, The Memory of Old Jack; Rachel Carson, Silent Spring,
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, and Al Gore, An Inconvenient
Truth; Lunsford, The Everyday Writer; and Dept. of English, Composition
and Literature.
Course Title: LITERATURE OF SPORTS
Time:
Class#: 56421
Place: 150 Robinson
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;
Lunsford, The Everyday Writer; and Dept. of English, Composition and
Literature.
Course Title: MARRIAGE IN LITERATURE
Time:
Class#: 56417
Place: 107 MS
Instructor: JOINER, Jennie
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Comedy ends with marriage; tragedy begins a year later.
~ Oscar Wilde
Inherent in Wilde’s seemingly flippant statement about the nature of marriage are two very important understandings. First, comedies end with marriage demonstrating an entrance and acceptance into culture—a traditional happily-ever-after trope. In many ways a rite of passage for both men and women, the act of marriage transforms the solitary existence of an individual into community membership through acceptance and unification. Once this occurs, as Wilde’s statement implies, locating identity becomes problematic as personal beliefs, values, and understandings come into conflict with the expectations of culture.
This course will examine how literature interrogates and portrays marriage in the first half of the 20th century. Is it a romantic (or natural) unification of two people or is it exposed as a political institution burdened with social meanings? Specifically, we will investigate the differences between the expected public performance of marriage and private interpretations of the institution, attempting to uncover the distinctions and determine the meaning of the distinctions in social and historical context.
Course work
will include daily reading responses, two essays, and will culminate with a
final research project that will include an annotated bibliography, and
in-class presentation, and a researched essay.
REQUIRED TEXTS: Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899);
Willa Cather, The Professor’s House (1922);
Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse (1927); D.H.
Lawrence, Lady Chatterly’s Lover (1928); F.
Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night (1934); William Faulkner, Go
Down, Moses (1942); Andrea Lunsford, The Everyday Writer and
Department of English, Composition and Literature.
Course Title: NUCLEAR FAMILIES IN LITERATURE
Time:
Class#: 76647
Place: 208 Smith
Instructor: VANDERVELDE, Jane
COURSE DESCRIPTION: We hear about the dysfunctional family today as if it is a new concept, one discovered and brought to light by Dr. Phil et al. But families have been dysfunctional since Genesis. We might even argue that a truly happy family is a myth. Whatever the case, unhappy families--especially those on the brink of meltdown--have supplied grist for literature since its beginnings.
We will focus
our study on diverse nuclear families from 20th century American
fiction and drama. We will compare them
to each other, to images on television and film, to cultural ideals and to our
own real lives. Small and large group
discussions will dominate class time along with a few films. Requirements: four papers, two projects, and
lots of in-class writing.
REQUIRED TEXTS: Faulkner, As I Lay Dying; Miller,
Death of a Salesman; Hansberry, A Raisin in
the Sun; Morrison, Song of Solomon; Smiley, A Thousand Acres;
DeLillo, White Noise; Lunsford, The
Everyday Writer; KU English, Composition and Literature.
Course Title: SHAKESPEARE ON FILM: WILL GOES
Time:
Class#: 82180
Place: 4020 Wescoe
Instructor: SUTLIFF, Alicia
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Shakespeare on Film will focus on six of Shakespeare’s plays, and the movie adaptations that followed centuries later. We will look at both the plays and films as texts, exploring how and why Shakespeare’s works--displayed on screen--are used as American cultural cache. Our main avenue into investigating Shakespeare as American cultural capital will be through audience reception of Shakespeare’s texts, such as how and why adaptations and spin-offs are received. We will also investigate how directors use varying film genres to bring Shakespeare’s plays to new audiences. For example, teen pix, like She’s the Man (2006) use Shakespeare as cultural capital differently than an earlier film version of Twelfth Night directed by Trevor Nunn (1996). We will further explore how American film and American audiences claim Shakespeare, a British playwright, as our own. Through the connection between plays and films, we will look at how Shakespeare’s language is used on screen and what that means for his plays themselves, and for the audience watching those plays. We will also explore what American ideal we place on Shakespeare’s works, and how the connection between Shakespeare and the film audience affects American identity.
Along with
the plays themselves, we will read scholarly articles concerning Shakespeare’s
plays on film. We will also build a
foundation in studying and reading film as a means to learn and interpret
Shakespeare’s original plays. The class
work will consist of presentations, response papers, a longer analytical paper,
creative projects (such as conceptualizing your own Shakespeare play on film),
group work and quizzes. THE PLAYS: Hamlet,
Macbeth, Othello, The Taming of the Shrew or Richard III, The Tempest, and Twelfth
Night.
Course Title: CROWNLESS SHALL AGAIN BE KING: J.R.R. TOLKEIN
& HIS INFLUENCES
Time:
Class #: 56423
Place: 144 JRP
Instructor: HOWARD, Rob
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The course will begin with a biographical perspective on Tolkien, and we will then quickly move into studying his writings. Our examination of Tolkien’s writings will be chronological, for the most part, and quite thorough. In other words, there will be a lot of reading as Tolkien’s main work, The Lord of the Rings is, in itself, over a thousand pages. We will begin with some of the short fiction Tolkien wrote early in his life (available online), and then move into the posthumously published Silmarillion. We will then read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, supplemented by readings from Tom Shippey’s book, Author of the Century. All along we will read supplementary material that influenced Tolkien. This will mostly be composed of medieval literature that Tolkien himself taught and/or wrote about such as “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, “Sir Orfeo”, and Beowulf. Students will write at least three major papers in the form of critical analyses of one or more of the works read and discussed in class. Classroom activity will mainly be comprised of discussion of the texts, though quizzes may routinely be given over assigned readings.
REQUIRED TEXTS: Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring; The
Two Towers; The Return of the King; The Hobbit; Shippey, J.R.R.
Tolkien: Author of the Century; Drout, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia;
Tolkien, The Silmarillion; Lunsford, The Everyday Writer; and
Dept. of English, Composition and Literature.
Course Title: TURN OF THE 20th CENTURY: AMERICAN
WOMEN WRITERS
Time:
Class#: 56433
Place: 4025 Wescoe
Instructor: ARAB, Teresa Fernandez
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 the 20th century. It is 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 the 19th century. We will study 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.
*Additional materials on the specific writers and the main topics of discussion will be on Reserve at Watson library. 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: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow
Wallpaper; Kate Chopin’s The Awakening; Sui Sin Far’s Mrs. Spring
Fragrance and Other Writings (including magazine articles); Frances
Harper’s Iola Leroy as well as a selection of essays and public
speeches; Maria Cristina Mena’s Collected Stories; Mourning Dove’s Cogewea; Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth;
cultural work by The Daughters of Hawai’i; Lunsford, The Everyday Writer;
and Dept. of English, Composition and Literature.