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Fall 2006
English 508: General Linguistics
The Making of a Sentence--Grammar
for Basic Writers
Professor Xiao-Ming Li
Fall 2006: Wed 6:00--8:00 pm
Grammar is seen by many as passé and boring, if not
downright retro. However, students in our writing classes
continue to struggle with forming sentences, and many instructors
have had little training in formal grammar and wrestle with
sentence-level errors mightily, often to little effect. More
seriously, grammatical correctness, despite our claims to
the contrary, continues to be the single most important determinant
of a student's advancement in most writing programs.
This course is designed for those who think grammar still
has a place in the teaching of writing and would like to understand
the constituents and structure of English sentences. We will
start from the parts of speech and move up the hierarchy to
the phrase, clause, and sentence, and then to the types of
sentences: simple, compound, and complex. Other related topics
to be discussed and examined in class are the syntactical
and stylistic differences between oral and written English,
the controversy between descriptive and prescriptive grammar,
the rhetorical use of grammar, and the advantages and limitations
of teaching grammar.
Each participant will do weekly grammar assignments and write
journal entries on grammar-related topics; most importantly,
he or she will work with a student or a tutee throughout the
semester and apply grammar to the analysis of the student/tutee
papers. The final project will be a comprehensive analysis
of the grammatical strengths and weaknesses of the student/tutee
writing and its possible progress during the semester to assess
the usefulness of grammar instruction.
Tentative texts:
DeCarrico, J. The Structure of English: Studies in Form
and Function for Language Teaching. Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 2000.
DeCarrico, J. & Franks. Workbook to accompany The
Structure of English. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2000.
Shaughnessy, Mina. Errors and Expectations.
English 522: Academic Writing Workshop
Professor Mary Hallet
Fall 2006: Mon 4:10--6:00 pm
This course offers graduate students from all disciplines
hands-on practice in the writing of academic essays, even
as it explores the shifting nature of the academic essay as
a genre across different disciplines and for different writing
purposes. Examining diverse models of academic writing, we
will work together to determine its common conventions, as
well as the conventions that are particular to specific disciplines
and fields. The workshop portion of the course asks students
to bring their work to the table--that is, to share their
own academic writing with their classmates and teacher in
order to receive productive feedback, and to be willing to
give productive feedback in return. By the end of the semester,
students should understand and practice academic writing as
an active engagement and conversation with scholars and ideas
in their own fields; they should see themselves as active
participants in these scholarly conversations, and as scholars
themselves who can advance the knowledge of their fields.
They should understand that academic writing is both a reflection
of what they learn and a mode of learning itself. Readings
in the class will be largely determined by students' interests
and the particular disciplines to which they belong. Writing
assignments will include essays based on the readings we do,
as well as readings students do in their individual disciplines.
English 523: Fiction Writing Workshop
Spirit & Dream Autobiography
Professor John High
Fall 2006: Wed 6:10--8:30 pm
In this course we will begin to sculpt our writings into
the language of spiritual and dream autobiographies. Humanity's
attempt to understand itself throughout the ages has often
resulted in a fringe of wr iting engaged in poetry of spirit
and a prose of quest, of prophecy, vision, verbal experimentation
and meditative stories that function as expressions of the
changing self. In your own writing quest, your discoveries
may tread between the realms of journey, dream, fiction, and
poetry, while leading you to a deeper sense of awareness and
awe of the secret depths of human character and verbal expression.
Autobiographies may include stories, dreams, poetry and poetic
prose; indeed, language itself can only gauge a spiritual
journey, but through language we discover and represent the
shifting and mysterious points of our identities and the world
around us.
In this workshop we will have a chance to glimpse one another's
strengths and weaknesses in writing and to offer suggestions
as to how to improve and build on the texts. The course will
operate on a workshop basis and students will be responsible
for providing verbal and written responses to one another's
work. We'll set out to understand the "strivings"
of each piece of writing in order to determine the ways in
which it can be structured and developed into a whole and,
afterwards, offer constructive criticism and helpful suggestions
to the author. There will be class discussions on what we
mean when we talk about the autobiography as a gathering ground
for material evolving out of the imagination's eye and the
world it inhabits in dream as well as reality; concurrently,
there will be readings and class discussions on the nature
of memory, improvisation, dream and persona. We will scrutinize
the craft of the pieces and explore how we might more effectively
implement, extend, and develop the techniques and forms of
these texts in our own evolving work. The goal of the course
includes completion of a portfolio of work and revised editions
of texts for a class anthology designed and edited by the
class, culminating in a group reading and party.
We'll be reading from Pilgrim Souls, a collection
of spiritual autobiographies, which includes authors ranging
from King David, St. Augustine, Tolstoy, Emily Dickinson,
Thomas Merton, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Norris, C.S. Lewis,
Annie Dillard, Flannery O'Connor, and Simon Weil.
English 526: Writing for Media I--The Story
Professor
Peg Gormley (from the Media Arts Department)
Fall 2006: Thu 6:00--8:50 pm
This cross-listed course is an introduction to the methods
and principles of great STORYTELLING in the media. It is the
cornerstone course for all forms of story: commercials, sitcoms,
movies, experimental shorts, even documentaries and photographic
essays. In the first half of the semester, by means of screenings
and discussion, students will learn to recognize and analyze
basic story elements such as narrative structure, character,
setting, plot, design, irony, and comedy. In the second half,
in workshop-style classes, students will work on creating
their own stories using these elements. Each student will
develop his/her own movie-short screenplay and treatment as
a final project. A professional screenwriter will be a guest
speaker at one of the classes. Requirements: access to a computer,
purchase of Final Draft writing software, permission
of instructor to take the course.
English 527: Professional Writing Workshop
Writing Throughout Your Career
Professor John Killoran
Fall 2006: Tue 6:10--8:00 pm
Most careers now involve some writing, and some careers involve
mostly writing; however such writing can be quite diverse,
not just from career to career but even within one career,
especially as our writing changes in conjunction with situational,
cultural, and technological changes. To master such diversity
and change, students of this course will learn common principles
for the diverse kinds of writing they might practice throughout
their evolving careers:
--writing for businesses and non-profit organizations;
--writing in various professions (health, legal, financial,
educational);
--writing about new technology and science;
--writing in traditional media and new media.
The course draws on rhetorical perspectives, notably those
inspired by genre scholarship and professional writing practices,
to provide students with a core of common principles for analyzing
and practicing diverse kinds of professional writing. As part
of their course work, students will analyze professional writing
and writing practices in a career area of their choice. Students
will also create and/or revise their resume and -drawing on
their writing in this course and their other professional
(or academic, or creative) writing-begin a print portfolio
or e-portfolio, and receive individual guidance and feedback
in consultation with the professor, who researches resume
writing and Web portfolios.
English 624: American Autobiography
Professor Patrick Horrigan
Fall 2006: Thu 6:10--8:00 pm
Forget "the great American novel": autobiography
is arguably the quintessential American genre. The course
will examine over three hundred years of Americans' use of
the first person in memoir, letter, diary, film, and comix.
More basically, we will attempt to define the genre, distinguishing
it from the novel and biography, and we will consider the
place of "the personal" in all manner of intellectual
and artistic production. Authors and texts may include Mary
Rowlandson's The Sovereignty & Goodness of God;
Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography; Frederick Douglass's
Narrative; Henry Adams's The Education of Henry
Adams; Mary Antin's The Promised Land; Gertrude
Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas; Richard
Wright's Black Boy; Thomas Merton's The Seven Story
Mountain; Tom Joslin's video diary Silverlake Life;
Richard Rodriquez's Brown; Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner,
and Frank Stack's graphic memoir Our Cancer Year; and
Joan Didion's The Year of Magically Thinking. Major
texts will be supplemented by readings in the theoretical
literature, and students will have the opportunity to write
critically as well as creatively--that is, to draft autobiographical
essays or stories of their own.
English 636: Postcolonial Literature and
the Atlantic World
Professor Maria McGarrity
Fall 2006: Mon 6:10--8:00 pm
Postcolonialism as a critical impulse has had a profound impact
on literary and cultural studies in recent years. This course
will examine the narratives that characterize Postcolonialism
by focusing on the encounter between the centralized colonial
metropolis and the Caribbean archipelago in the twentieth
century. The creative works in this course represent the colonial
and postcolonial imagination from both the centers and the
margins of empire. We will read urban novelists who imagine
the empire in their works as well as writrs from the Caribbean
who write back to the center. We will examine what impact
the Atlantic World and Transatlantic movement has had on these
narratives, paying special attention to the Atlantic world
impact on the Haitian Revolution. We will explore foundational
texts in the field and complicate the following topics: globalism
and local culture; the psychology of colonialism; landscape
and empire; sexual transgression and the constructions of
the Other; and imagining nationalisms. Requirements are a
class presentation on an historical/colonial subject, a short
paper based on the presentation, and a final research seminar
paper.
English 646: Individual and Small Group
Writing Instruction
Professor Mary Hallet
Fall 2006: Tue 4:10--6:00 pm
Research in the teaching of writing has repeatedly revealed
the benefits for student learning of one-to-one instruction
and small group collaborative work. Such research has helped
shift the focus of writing instruction away from classroom
drills in, and lectures about, grammar and the rules of composition
to a more dialectical approach to learning, one that encourages
active student participation. Concurrent with this move away
from the "lecture hall" mode of teaching has been
the proliferation of university writing centers staffed with
specially trained tutors, as well as an emphasis among writing
teachers upon one-on-one writing conferences and small collaborative
learning groups in the classroom. This course will contextualize
these changes in writing instruction within the larger framework
of composition theory and history. More specifically, the
course will focus on the theories, policies, dynamics and
practices of individual and small group writing instruction.
We will not only read about and discuss theories and issues
relating to these topics, but we will also observe and practice
individual/small group writing instruction within the contexts
of tutoring and classroom environments. Writing assignments
will include short journal responses to the readings and discussions,
as well as reflections upon your own experiences with individual
and/or small group instruction; an analysis of such instruction
within the Writing Center or a composition classroom; and
a final project that focuses in depth on one of the issues
we have read about and discussed in class.
English 650: Gender and Sexuality in Medieval
Literature
Professor Sealy Gilles
Fall 2006: Tue 6:10--8:00 pm
This seminar explores the formation of masculine and feminine
identities in the literature of the Middle Ages. The focus
is on western Europe and England, with brief forays into the
Arabic tradition. All texts will be read in modern translations,
and the course is designed for the non-specialist. Medieval
romances, folk tales, and love lyrics have shaped our ideas
of what it is to be a man or a woman, and our attitudes towards
sexuality. The course examines those notions about who we
are and how we relate to others as they are embodied in texts
from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries. We shall
look closely at bonds between men (brotherhood, king and vassal,
father and son) and between women (sisterhood, mother and
daughter, the hag and the young woman). The nature of male
heroism and of the lady will be particular topics of concern,
but we will also be reading texts in which men are the objects
of desire and women the aggressors, as well as poems that
express same-sex desire. In addition, the class will explore
anxieties about gender and sexual control, in particular through
examining the connection between leprosy and promiscuity in
the later Middle Ages.
Texts include Tristan and Isolde, Abelard and Heloise,
the lais of Marie de France, Dante's Vita Nuova, Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales, Robert Henryson's Testament of
Cresseid, and a wide selection of lyric poetry. Requirements
include a brief, close-reading essay; an oral presentation;
and a researched, documented essay.
English 708: Thesis
Time to be arranged individually--Contact Professor
Marilyn Boutwell
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