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Summer One 2005
English 103: Workshop in the Essay
Professor Deborah Mutnick
MTWTh
1:00 to 2:50 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, and literary techniques. Students will benefit from
a group of readers with different perspectives, close readings
of their work, and constructive criticism.
Readings include essays by Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin,
Richard Rodriguez, Vivian Gornick, and Susan Griffin. Students
will present their writing in workshops at least twice during
the semester. Writing requirements include a course journal,
two short (3-5 page) essays, and one longer (8-10 page) essay
or the equivalent.
English 225: Science Fiction
Professor Wayne Berninger
MTWTh
3:00 to 4:50 pm
Alien invasions and rocket ships! Runaway robots and malevolent
computer programs! Clones and cyborgs! Virtual reality and
mind control! Time travel and ecological disaster!
For at least a century, fiction writers have dealt with subjects
such as these as they attempt to answer the question of whether
technology and scientific progress will save us or destroy
us. These writers have sought to complicate our understanding
of the modern world by creating fiction in which human beings
struggle to cope with the psychological, social, political,
environmental, and spiritual implications of scientific advancement.
Often dismissed as merely a frivolous sub-genre of "serious
literature," science fiction has become one of our culture's
most popular forms of literature (not to mention film). It
has become a popular pastime among science fiction fans to
catalogue examples of science fiction's predictive impact
on society, from the naming of the first NASA space shuttle
after Star Trek's U. S. S. Enterprise, to cyberpunk's anticipation
of the advent of artificial intelligence and the Internet.
Why is science fiction so popular? What is its value? Why
do so many readers think science fiction is so important to
an understanding of modern culture? Given science fiction's
increasing popularity and its sometimes eerie, recursive influence
on the culture at large, these are important questions for
literary scholars and cultural critics, not to mention the
general public, and it seems important for English majors
to have at least a working knowledge of this strange branch
of modern literature.
In this course, we will examine the historical and theoretical
development of the genre of science fiction, from its early
precursors in the late nineteenth century to the "space
opera" of the 1920s and 1930s and the "Golden Age"
of the late 1940s and 1950s, and from the "New Wave"
of the 1960s and 1970s to the "cyberpunk" of the
modern day. Through class discussion of key terms and concepts
used in the critical discussion of science fiction, we will
develop an understanding of how it fits into the overall literary
and intellectual tradition of the West. We will investigate
how science fiction evolved in response to rapid technological
and scientific advancement (in both the hard and soft sciences)
in Western culture, and how science fiction therefore provides
us with a unique lens through which to critique that culture
and to understand our lives in the modern world.
Summer Two 2005
English 126: News Writing
(same as JOU 119)
Taught by faculty from the Department of Journalism, which
you should contact for course description.
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