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English 520: Non-Fiction Writing Workshop
Professor Harriet Malinowitz
This course will focus on writing the personal
essay. The first few weeks will be devoted to reading personal essays
by established authors and analyzing their form, their style, the
rhetorical strategies they employ, and their use of language. This
examination should help us understand the ways personal essays present
and interrogate the self and subjective experience. Our reading
of published essays will continue, though on a less frequent basis,
throughout the term, as we will soon move to a workshop format in
which students’ essays are read and discussed in detail. The
goal of the workshop critique is to help the writer move toward
more effective revision; each student will be expected to produce
two developed 10-15 page personal essays by the end of the term.
We will use Philip Lopate’s The Art of the Personal Essay,
as well as selected handouts. The essayists we will read may include
George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Adrienne Rich, Richard
Rodriguez, Patricia Williams, Vivian Gornick, Maxine Hong Kingston,
and Jamaica Kincaid. Individual conferences with the instructor
are greatly encouraged.
English 523: Fiction Writing Workshop
section 1: Professor Lewis Warsh
section 2: Professor Eric Lehman
This workshop
explores both the art and the craft of fiction writing. Frequent
writing assignments and exercises will concentrate on the conventions
of fiction---description, dialogue, characterization---as well as
the more experimental possibilities such as fragmentation and shifting
point of view. Focus will be on the way autobiography over laps
with fiction and how the past is fictionalized as a way of keeping
it alive. Among the models we will look at are the stories and novels
by Marguerite Duras, Don DeLillo, Lydia Davis, and James Ellroy.
Much of the workshop time will be spent reading and discussing student
work.
English 579: Queer Pop Culture in the United
States
Professor Michael Bennett
Is there such a thing as "queer pop culture"
in the United States, and if so, what does it look like? Is
there a specifically queer way of reading, viewing, or consuming
culture? Why use the word "queer" rather than "lesbian
and gay"? How is queer pop culture shaped in relation
to other identity markers, such as gender, race, and class?
These are some of the questions that we will address in this course.
These explorations will serve as the foundation from which we will
launch into an analysis of different representations of queerness
in American literature, film, and politics. Topics to be discussed
from a queer perspective may include: nineteenth-century women's
fiction, the Harlem Renaissance, film and television, journalism,
photography, AIDS and breast cancer, outing, pornography, s/m and
sex culture, transvestites and drag, and cyberspace. These
topics will be discussed in the context of the relationship of queer
theory to American culture and politics. Texts: Ablelove's
The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader; Creekmur and Doty's Out
in Culture: Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Essays on Popular Culture;
Larsen's Quicksand and Passing; and Jagose's Queer Theory:
An Introduction.
English 624: Melville’s Moby Dick
Professor Patrick Horrigan
For many readers, Herman Melville’s Moby
Dick, or, The Whale (1851) is the great American
novel, and by any standards it is one of the most thrilling and
strange accomplishments in world literature. But because of its
size and complexity, it is also one of the most under read of the
great books. In the first half of this course, we will take the
time to read the novel in its entirety. Then in the second half
of the course, we will study a range of critical responses to the
novel, placing it in its historical, biographical, and literary
contexts. We will also look at a number of artistic responses to
the novel, including Laurie Anderson’s recent “Songs
and Stories from Moby Dick.”
Field trips for the course may include visits to lower Manhattan,
the setting for the opening chapter of the novel; Woodlawn Cemetery
in the Bronx, where Melville is buried; the rare book and manuscript
collection at the New York Public Library; and the collections of
nineteenth-century American paintings and artifacts in Brooklyn
and Manhattan. Each student will give an in-class presentation and
write a research paper. Our ultimate aim in the course will be to
understand the role that Moby Dick has played and continues
to play in the ongoing story of American culture.
English 641: Literacy and Basic Writing
Professor Deborah Mutnick
This course aims to situate the basic writing instruction on the
college level in the broader field of literacy studies. We will
address several key questions: What is literacy? What is orality?
What social and historical forces account for patterns of literacy
and illiteracy? What myths surround literacy? How can educators
help promote literacy? What defines a basic writer? What kind of
instruction can enable so-called basic writers to become proficient
readers and writers? What discussions are currently taking place
in the field of basic writing and what implications might they have
for institutions like LIU?
A tentative reading list includes works
by Wtitleer Ong, Paulo Freire, William Labov, Shirley Brice Heath,
James Paul Gee, Mike Rose, Deborah Brandt, Linda Brodkey, Mina Shaughnessy,
Min-Zhan Lu, Tom Fox, and Bruce Horner. Writing requirements will
include a course journal, a literacy autobiography, and a research
paper that may be based on library and/or field research.
English 643: Seminar in Shakespeare
Professor Joan Templeton
We will be reading major tragedies and comedies of the greatest
writer in the language. The course emphasizes both text and performance; films, videos
of performances, and attendance at a live performance will be included.
Texts: Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, 12th
Night, King Lear, Midsummer Nights’ Dream, and The Merchant
of Venice.
English 646: Individual & Small Group
Writing
Professor Patricia Stephens
Attention: Advanced undergraduate students may enroll for this course
with permission of the instructor.
In this class, we will examine the theory and practice of individual
and small group writing instruction, locating writing center work
within its broader historical and institutional contexts. The course
will begin with an overview of writing center history, theory, and
pedagogy and will then examine some of the most common tutoring
concerns: structuring sessions and setting goals; assessing, diagnosing
and responding to student writing; learning strategies to teach
planning, drafting, revising, proofreading and editing; learning
strategies to work on specific grammatical concerns; helping students
with reading comprehension; working with ESL concerns; noticing
interpersonal dynamics and maintaining boundaries; respecting and
responding to cultural and ethnic differences; working as an online
tutor; and facilitating small group sessions. Students interested
in pursuing a specific topic not included in the general readings---such
as writing center administration---may do so with permission from
the instructor.
Possible texts: Good Intentions:
Writing Center Work for Postmodern Times; Rhetorical Grammar; Teaching
One-to-One: The Writing Center Conference; The Practical Tutor;
Tutoring Writing; and, Wiring the Writing Center.
Students who enroll in the course will
be required to tutor for one hour per week during the semester at
the Writing Center and to audio and/or videotape one session with
a student. The taped session will be transcribed and analyzed by
the student for use in a self-study. Classes will be conducted as
seminars/workshops so that all students have the opportunity to
participate in class presentations, mock tutorials, etc. Each student
will generate her/his own idea/s for a final written (and/or action)
project based on topics of interest during the semester.
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