Spring 2007
English 520: Non-Fiction Writing Workshop
Professor Deborah Mutnick
Wednesdays 4:10 - 6:00 pm
The nonfiction writing workshop is designed to give you
the opportunity to develop your writing in a community of
writers. The focus this semester will be on the personal
essay in relation to nonfiction writing in general. The
course explores various approaches to nonfiction writing,
such as the use of autobiography to anchor criticism and
of fictional techniques like dialogue and point of view
to write about real places, people, and events. It also
raises theoretical questions such as what distinguishes
nonfiction from fiction. What constitutes "creative"
writing? What does the personal essay tell us about larger
social and historical issues? And what role does the "I"
play in different types of nonfiction writing? You will
benefit from a group of readers with different perspectives
whose job it will be to provide close readings and constructive
criticism of your work.
Those interested in oral history and ethnography will have
the opportunity to participate in one of two ongoing documentary
projects. "Making a Legacy: The Story of an Urban Public
School" is a seven-year project tracking the progress
of the pioneering sixth grade class at the Urban Assembly
Academy of Arts & Letters, a new secondary school that
started in fall 2006 and is located at 225 Adelphi Street,
a few blocks from LIU. "Homegrown Stories" is
an intergenerational storytelling project sponsored by the
Prospect Lefferts Gardens (PLG) neighborhood association.
PLG is an area in Brooklyn bordered by Prospect Park, Crown
Heights, Flatbush, and Parkside Avenue.
Throughout the semester, we will read published essays
as models, identifying and experimenting with different
techniques, styles, and approaches to nonfiction writing.
Among the writers we will read are Virginia Woolf, James
Baldwin, Vivian Gornick, Susan Griffin, Alice Walker, Richard
Rodriquez, Edward Hoagland, Harvey Wang, Jane Lazarre, and
Warren Lehrer and Judith Sloan. The emphasis of the class,
however, will be on your own writing, which will be discussed
at least twice in workshop during the semester. You will
be required to complete two short (4-6 page) essays, and
one longer (15-20 page) essay or the equivalent, as well
as keep a writer's notebook.
English 524: See Sun, Think Shadow—Poetry Writing
Workshop
Professor Lewis Warsh
Mondays 6:10 - 8:30 pm
"See sun, think shadow" is a quote by Louis Zukofsky,
a great poet of New York City, whose poetry attempted to
capture the light and darkness of his immediate surroundings.
"Sun" and "shadow" are states of mind
and also emotional states-the external world of the sun
(what we see) and the interior world lost in shadow (what
we're feeling). One goal of poetry is to transcribe the
shifts from one state to another and also recreate the experience
of what it feels like to be in the sun and in the shadow
simultaneously.
We will use this workshop to expand the range of what's
possible as poets and will begin by exploring the traditions
and the various forms of poetry (among them the sonnet,
the sestina, the villanelle). One primary concern is the
way that poetry changes through time (in the same way that
painting and music changes) and how poetry reflects the
time in which it is written. We will also discuss the notion
of experimentation, and how writing is an act of risk-taking,
i.e. without taking risks nothing ever changes. Is all great
writing, for instance, experimental writing? In what ways
is writing poetry similar to scientific discovery of invention?
We will discuss, at length, what "experiment"
means in relation to poetry. Among the poets we will look
at closely are Louis Zukofsky, Charles Reznikoff, Ted Berrigan,
Elizabeth Bishop, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams,
Robert Creeley, Bernadette Mayer, Amiri Baraka, Alice Notley,
Jack Spicer, Frank O'Hara, and Allen Ginsberg. We will also
explore the ways in which poetry connects to theory, touching
on essays by Maurice Blanchot and Lyn Hejinian.
English 525: Playwriting Workshop
Professor Katt Lissard
Wednesdays 6:10 - 8:30 pm
This course will be divided into three parts. We'll begin
with a brief introduction to the history and basics of dramatic
writing, using Aristotle's Poetics, David Ball's
Backwards and Forwards and Shakespeare's Hamlet.
The second phase will focus on scene and character development,
through a series of written exercises and assignments, as
each student begins drafting a one-act play. The final section
of the course will be devoted to workshopping each student's
play-in-progress. Ongoing discussion of playwriting craft,
theory, and form will be directly related to the individual
needs of participating student playwrights and the work
each student is developing. Along with the texts mentioned
above, we'll be reading relevant plays and using Keith Johnstone's
Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre as an ongoing
resource. The workshop will culminate in an evening of public
readings of student work.
Katt Lissard, a writer and
director, spent most of 2005 in Lesotho, Africa on a Fulbright
Award - teaching in the Theatre Unit at the National University
of Lesotho, producing and directing plays, and researching
the dramatic response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Her most recent
play, The Law of Falling Bodies, was part of the Third
Millennium Festival. Her work has been seen at a variety of
NYC venues, including: Dixon Place, HERE, NYU's Experimental
Theatre Wing, the ArcLight, St. Mark's in the Bowery, and
the former Circle Rep Lab. She is a Mabou Mines Resident Artist
alum, an Affiliate Artist of New Georges Theatre Company and
a MacDowell Colony Fellow. Lissard also teaches in the Goddard
College Interdisciplinary Masters Program and at the State
University of New York, Empire State College.
back to ENG 525 course description
English 527: Web Authoring
Professor John Killoran
Tuesdays 6:10 -8:00 pm
According to a 2004 study by the Pew Internet and American
Life Project, 44% of American Internet users have contributed
some of their own work to the online world. Projecting from
current economic and cultural trends, we can reasonably
assume that almost 100% of writers and professional communicators
will be expected to author some part of the online world.
To increase their understanding of, participation in, and
marketability for such online authorship, students of this
course will learn the principles, research, and practices
of creating and publishing work on the Web.
Classes will be devoted to such topics as…
•Web rhetoric practices by commercial and non-profit
organizations, throughout civic society, and in personal,
professional, and communal publishing;
• information architecture and hypertext navigation;
• information design principles and Web layout practices;
• writing for and reading from the computer screen,
screen typography;
• rhetoric of integrating text with photographs, graphics,
and color;
• user analysis and usability testing.
As a major part of their course work, students will write,
design, and publish a Web site on a topic of their specialty.
Web Knowledge, Skills, and Prerequisites
As this is a graduate-level course, much class time will
be devoted to developing students' conceptual knowledge:
the principles of and research on Web rhetoric. Students
will also develop their Web authoring skills:
• hand coding XHTML and CSS,
•using a Web editor,
•creating basic graphics and modifying photographs
in Photoshop,
•publishing and maintaining their sites.
The course is designed to accommodate students with little
or no Web-authoring experience, though such students should…
• have regular computer and Internet access,
•be very familiar with the Internet,
•be willing to learn quickly.
Students who have already developed these Web-authoring
skills will focus their learning on Web research and Web
rhetoric and, in consultation with the professor, will be
permitted to complete and submit certain basic in-class
course work from home.
English 625: 19th Century American Literature
Professor Michael Bennett
Mondays 4:10 - 6:00 pm
In this course, we will be studying literature written
in the United States between 1840 and 1900 and the body
of critical work that responds to this literature. The first
part of this course will be devoted to the antebellum period.
We will consider why this period has been called "the
American Renaissance" and explore what, if anything,
that label adds to our understanding of American culture
before the Civil War. The last part of this course will
examine American culture in the postbellum period. We will
explore the adequacy of the term Realism for describing
American literature written during the period of rising
industrialism after the Civil War. In both parts of the
course, we will interrogate what is meant by some of our
key terms: American, literature, author, culture. We will
keep in view how issues of gender and race shape (or misshape)
our understanding of these terms.
Readings from: Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Henry
Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt
Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Fanny Fern, Rebecca
Harding Davis, Mark Twain, Henry James, Kate Chopin, Charles
Chesnutt.
English 641: Literacy/ Basic Writing
Professor Xiao-Ming Li
Thursdays 4:10 - 6:00 pm
THIS COURSE WAS CANCELLED.
In this course we will examine whom we teach and what we
teach in basic writing courses, i.e. who are basic writers?
And what is literacy? Based on the understanding of those
two issues, we will discuss how to teach basic writers what
we claim to teach. To answer the question of whom, we will
read Shirley Brice Heath and Shondel Nero, whose studies of
basic writers, the latter of students at LIU in particular,
provide useful templates for our own ethnographic or case
studies. For the question on literacy, we will read such influential
educators as E.D. Hirsch, Paulo Freire, and Patricia Bizzell.
To ponder the last question of how, we will examine models
such as the Pittsburg model (Batholomae and Petrosky) and
the Amherst model (Robin Varnum), and those described by Mina
Shaughnessay and Geneva Smitherman in their well celebrated
books. A Sourcebook for Basic Writing Teachers edited
by Theresa Enos will be used as a companion book for all discussions.
All participants will keep a reading journal to "think
aloud" all reading assignments. Each will also engage
in a semester-long project to study one of the three key
issues proposed above. The project will culminate in a paper
of 10-15 pages, which should 1) synthesize and evaluate
the readings pertinent to the issue; 2) analyze one basic
writer's written texts throughout the semester in the context
of the writer's life experience; and 3) propose concrete
methodology tailored to this particular basic writer.
English 651: 16th & 17th Century English Literature
Professor Seymour Kleinberg
Tuesdays 6:10 - 8:00 pm
THIS COURSE WAS CANCELLED.
In this course we will explore the sonnets of Shakespeare,
and the lyrics of John Donne, George Herbert, and Andrew
Marvel (these last 3 known as the Metaphysical Poets). A
term paper and a final essay in lieu of an exam are required.
In addition, students will lead discussions each week. The
course is a close reading of 4 major lyric poets to see
how their ideas are expressed in their language and forms.
English 700: Practicum in Teaching Composition
Professor Donald McCrary
Tuesdays 4:10 - 6:00 pm
This course prepares graduate English students to teach
in the LIU/Brooklyn Writing Program by examining the theories
and practices that guide the program, including social constructionism,
process writing, portfolio assessment, and thematic course
design and applying those theories and practices to the
creation of a viable English 16 syllabus. In addition, the
course will explore managing the classroom, creating/integrating
reading and writing assignments, responding to student texts,
teaching grammar, organizing/facilitating teacher-student
conferences, and addressing the linguistic issues of a multicultural
student population.
Possible texts for the course might include Facts, Artifacts,
and Counterfacts by Anthony Petrosky and David Bartholomae,
The St. Martin's Guide to Teaching Writing by Cheryl
Glenn et al, and Portfolio Assessment in the Reading Writing
Classroom by Robert J. Tierney, Mark A. Carter, and Laura
E. Desai.
English 707: Methods in Research & Criticism
Professor Bernard Schweizer
Thursdays 6:10 - 8:00 pm
This course will expose students to major schools of 20th-century
critical theory, including New Criticism, Marxism, Feminism,
Historicism, and Postcolonialism, and it will familiarize
them with fundamental aspects of methodology and research.
We will approach the critical heritage from three perspectives:
first, we will engage in a discourse about the why and wherefore
of theory in general, using Jonathan Culler's meta-theoretical
Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction; next, we
will encounter various schools of criticism" in action;"
that is, we will see how specific critical tools are used
in interpretations of our core text, Jane Eyre; third,
we will compare two different critical editions of Jane
Eyre, assessing the theoretical premises underpinning
each edition and identifying the editorial assumptions that
went into the making of these textbooks. Finally, we will
put what we learned in the first half of the course into practice.
The class will be divided into groups, each of which will
put together a "critical edition" of their own.
That is, each group will act as an editorial committee working
with either Rebecca West's The Return of the Soldier
or Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. The group is
to collect a number of relevant critical treatments of these
novels, write introductions, and collate the material to resemble
an editorial apparatus. The groups are to give a progress
report on their evolving critical editions week by week.
Assigned Texts: Jane Eyre, Bedford St. Martin's Critical
Edition; Jane Eyre, Norton Critical Edition; Literary
Theory: A Very Short Introduction, Jonathan Culler; The
Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; and Brideshead
Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.
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