Fall 2004
English 101: Introduction to English Studies
Professor Melissa Antinori
(now Berninger)
Mondays & Wednesdays
12:00 pm to 1:15 pm
What does one need to know to be an English major or minor?
What do English majors and minors study and learn? What kinds
of careers and educational opportunities await those who graduate
with a degree in English? This course is designed to familiarize
students with the diversity and scope of English studies and
to introduce students to contemporary debates concerning such
issues as the connection between reading and writing, the
relationship among different interpretive/critical strategies,
and the nature and politics of the literary canon. In this
course, we will 1) learn about the rise of English as a discipline
and how the profession of English has changed over time; 2)
analyze the formation and politics of the literary canon;
2) engage in close readings of literary texts; and 4) examine
and experiment with numerous methods of literary criticism
and analysis. This course will be conducted as a seminar,
and students will be expected to participate in and take responsibility
for class discussions.
Eng. 103: Workshop in the Essay
Professor Deborah Mutnick
Mondays & Wednesdays
1:30 pm. to 2:45 pm
This course gives students the opportunity to develop, share,
and get feedback on their writing in a workshop format. The
focus is on the essay, a genre we will explore from a variety
of angles: formal, informal, personal, academic, traditional,
and experimental. Through juxtaposing one type of essay with
another, students will expand their repertoire of strategies
and practice the art of shaping writing for particular occasions,
audiences, and purposes. We will study different, often mixed
approaches to the essay, including autobiography, critical
analysis, literary techniques, and ethnographic methods such
as oral histories. Students will benefit from a group of readers
with different perspectives, close readings of their work,
and constructive criticism. There is an option of fieldwork
as the basis for one required essay.
Readings include essays by Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin,
Richard Rodriguez, Vivian Gornick, Susan Griffin, and Alice
Walker. Students will present their writing in weekly workshops
at least twice during the semester. Writing requirements include
a course journal, three short (3-5) page essays and one longer
(8-12 page) essay or the equivalent.
English 104 section 1: Creative Writing Workshop
Professor Barbara Henning
Mondays & Wednesdays
3:00 pm to 4:15 pm
In this writing workshop, students will read, study, and
write poetry and short stories. During the first half of each
workshop, we will discuss examples of poems and stories. Then
I will provide a specific assignment for the following workshop.
The main text for the remaining class time will be student
writing; we will workshop each poem and story, helping each
other improve each other's drafts. The emphasis will be on
form and structure, especially learning to be particular with
writing, rather than general, including images and detail
in both stories and poems. A midterm and final portfolio will
include revised poems and stories, as well as a review of
learning and a self-evaluation. Thee will be a packet of assignments
and Xeroxed fiction. Recommended text: The Handbook of
Poetic Forms.
English 104 section 2: Creative Writing
Professor Lewis Warsh
Thursdays
6:00 pm to 8:30 pm
The goal of the workshop is to expand our ideas of "what
is a poem" and "what is a work of fiction."
Are poetry and fiction exclusive or related genres? Weekly
assignments will question preconceived notions of form, content
and gender, with emphasis on the best ways to transcribe thought
processes and experiences into writing. Work by Marguerite
Duras, Ted Berrigan, Frank O'Hara, William Carlos Williams,
Lydia Davis, Lyn Hejinian, Elizabeth Bishop and Andre Breton
and others will be discussed in class, and used as models,
but much of the workshop time will be spent reading and discussing
our own writing. A final portfolio of work will be required.
English 126 section 1: News Writing (same as Journalism
126)
Staff from the Department
of Journalism
Tuesdays & Thursdays
3:00 pm to 4:50 pm
English 126 section 2: News Writing (same as Journalism
126)
Staff from the Department
of Journalism
Tuesdays
6:00 pm to 8:50 pm
English 128: The Voyage from Beowulf to Hamlet
Professor Joan Templeton
Tuesdays & Thursdays
1:30 pm to 2:45 pm
A study of masterpieces of English literature from the Old
English period through Shakespeare through the motif of the
voyage. Readings include the Old-English epic poem Beowulf,
the medieval morality play Everyman, selections from
Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, selections from Shakespeare's
sonnets, and Hamlet. Students will write essays based
on the readings and class discussions.
English 158: Literature of the United States I
Professor Michael Bennett
Wednesdays
6:00 pm to 8:30 pm
This course will examine the works of literature written
before 1865 in what is now the United States. The theme of
the course is "American Myths, U.S. Realities."
We will explore the contrasts between the myths that have
produced America and the lived realities of those who reside
within the borders of the United States. Rather than focusing
on a few "masterpieces," we will read a wide variety
of short prose pieces and poetry, much of which has not received
a great deal of study. We will also discuss the "major
authors" traditionally associated with the period, but
we will examine them from a comparative perspective: Cooper's
version of the frontier juxtaposed with that of Native American
narratives; Emerson's transcendentalism compared with the
immanent concerns of abolitionist writers; Hawthorne's romanticism
versus that of the women writers he flippantly dismissed.
In order to make such comparisons, we will examine the contexts
as Native, European, African, Hispanic--to provide an historically
grounded survey of early American Literature.
English 165: Poetry Workshop
Professor Barbara Henning
Mondays & Wednesdays
4:30 pm to 5:45 pm
In this undergraduate poetry workshop, we will review some
of the history of poetry, practicing traditional forms as
well as experimental variations. While there will be some
open workshops, assignments will be provided most of the time.
Some of the forms and approaches we will study will include
sonnets, free verse, blues & jazz poetry, personism, cubism,
etc. Students will be required to write poetry every week,
to keep a journal, and to rewrite their poems for a final
portfolio. We will also attend two poetry readings during
the semester. The text for the class will be The Handbook
of Poetic Forms.
English 233: The Radical Decade--British Literature in
the l930s
THIS COURSE DID NOT RUN THIS
SEMESTER.
Professor Bernard Schweizer
Tuesdays & Thursdays
3:00 pm to 4:15 pm
The l930s in England were a crisis-ridden and anxiety-producing
yet also artistically fertile period. This course will take
a broadly historicist approach, examining literary manifestations
of the socio-political and cultural parameters that shaped
the decade between the stock-market crash in l929 and the
beginning of WW II in l939. Our attention will focus on how
British intellectuals of the time engaged the issues of domestic
ideological radicalization, the gender question, decolonization,
the rise of totalitarianism, and the Spanish Civil War. Through
close and comparative readings of novels, poems, travel books,
and essays by the period's most outstanding writers (including
Graham Greene, Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, George Orwell,
and W. H. Auden), we will discover how literary texts not
only represented their historical context but also transcended,
and possibly shaped the external reality of contemporary socio-political
conditions.
Assigned Texts: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (l932);
Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies (l930); Graham Greene, It's
a Battlefield (l934); George Orwell, Homage to Calalonia
(l938) & "A Hanging" (l931); Virginia Woolf,
Three Guineas (l938); Rebecca West, "Woman as
Artist and Thinker" (l932); Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye
to Berlin (l939); W.H. Auden, poems; and Stephen Spender,
poems.
English 234: The Twenties--New York & Paris
Professor Howard Silverstein
Tuesdays & Thursdays
12:00 pm to 1:15 pm
In America the end of World War I inaugurated a new decade
sometimes referred to as "The Jazz Age" or "The
Roaring Twenties." Old orders had fallen after the war:
dreams, values, conduct had been shattered and the world prior
to l914 had irrevocably been changed. One of the profound
changes in the United States was the initiation of the Volstead
Act, more commonly know as Prohibition. In its wake came the
"speakeasy" and the rise of gangsterism. The constitutional
amendment which gave women the right to vote influenced the
twenties phenomenon known as the "flapper": young
women danced the Charleston in skirts that rose above the
knees and wore their hair bobbed. New York City became one
of the cultural capitals of the world, especially in the literary
scene that saw the birth of writers like Dos Passos, Fitzgerald,
and distinguished members of the Harlem Renaissance as well
as the rise of such magazines as The New Yorker and
Vanity Fair. In Paris, Gertrude Stein, who held court
on the left bank, referred to the twenties as the era of "the
lost generation." Boatload after boatload arrived, carrying
young American expatriates. Fleeing what they felt was the
Puritanism of American life, they fell in love with a city
that was a bargain to live in, that championed "free
love" and that had no laws about alcoholic abstinence.
In the New York section of the course, students will be required
to read John Dos Passos's Manhattan Transfer, F. Scott
Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Nella Larsen's Passing,
and Eugene O'Neill's The Great God Brown. Our examination
of the expatriate movement in Paris will focus on Gertrude
Stein's Three Lives, Ernest Hemingway's The Sun
Also Rises, and F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the
Night. A trip to the Museum of Modern Art will be scheduled
as well as the screening of some silent films. Three short
critical papers and an oral presentation are required.
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