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English 150E: Literature, Self and
Society. What does literature have to do with
my life? What kinds of impacts can literature have on a society? How will
learning to read and write about literature help me to become responsibly
engaged in the world? In this class we will emphasize ways to read and respond
to fiction, drama, poetry, and nonfiction mainly from American and European English 160E: Global Literature and
Human Experiences This course focuses on literature from diverse cultures throughout the world. Selections are made from fiction, drama, poetry, and nonfiction that address important issues in our lives. Emphasis is placed on ways to read and respond to literature. The dimensions of identity as expressed in literature will focus much of our study. As we analyze and discuss the content and contexts of literary texts from around the globe, we will explore both cultural diversity and human commonality, two aspects that lead us to a respect for the individual, and lead us to greater understanding of the individual as a member of various interdependent communities. Such an understanding will better enable you to engage responsibly with others in the world, to understand and appreciate the grounds for interaction underlying various texts that originate from diverse cultures. English 227: Foundations of Creative
Writing This course will provide a background in creative writing in three genres: poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction. We will begin with poetry, and by studying three established, contemporary American poets. With the use of a poetry writing manual, we will write about and discuss these poets' work. After our formal study of poetry and poetry craft, we will write three poems, each one to be workshopped and discussed. Next, a section will be devoted to nonfiction; we will read and discuss contemporary nonfiction articles and essays from anthologies, the New York Times Magazine, and other sources. To round out the course, we will study the writing of short fiction, using the same approach as in our study of poetry. We will wrrite one short story for class workshops and discussion; that story will be taken through two workshop drafts. English 230: Introduction to Literary
Scholarship This course will give students an introduction to major approaches to reading and writing within the discipline of English. Students will learn techniques for writing about literature and using research methods that provide theoretical and historical contexts for interpretation. Our thematic focus will be on desire, guilt, and injustice. We will pursue in-depth study of a classic British work, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and one contemporary novel. We will pay particular attention to how our literary heritage’s settings, structures, and obsessions have been haunted by gender, social, and ethnic inequalities. English 317: News Writing This is good preparation for any writing course. It is also helpful to business and pre-law students, as it is an opportunity to hone writing skills. The class is composed of some lecture, discussion, peer writing workshops, and frequent guest speakers. Assignments will include five news stories (each with two drafts), writing exercises, correspondence via email with professional journalists who serve as mentors, and student led discussions on readings. We will be using the following texts: Reporting and Writing by Christopher Scanlan, and the AP Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law. English 318: Feature Writing In this class, we will explore the craft of feature writing through extensive reading and writing assignments designed to help you determine how and where to find good stories; to give you experience in setting up interviews, conducting background research, and developing your ideas into polished work; to hone your powers of observation and narration; to strengthen your appreciation and use of techniques borrowed from fiction such as character development, dialogue, language, rhythm, figures of speech, and sensory detail; and to develop your critical skills as a reader of your own, your peers’, and published authors’ work. This course will focus on both newspaper and magazine writing, and you will produce polished feature stories for both markets. In addition, we’ll talk about targeting your work to specific publications, and you’ll try to place at least one story in The Concordian or other newspaper or magazine. In addition, we’ll periodically meet with various guest journalists and others to learn more about the craft of feature writing. At the conclusion of the semester, you'll turn in a portfolio of your work—including your writing journal, a self-evaluation, a “meditation” on the nature of the feature story,, and your revised and completed stories. Prerequisite: Eng. 317. English
324: Technical Writing This course is designed to give students experience in writing a variety of technical documents including business reports, users' manuals, scientific reports, grant proposals, and website text. The emphasis of the assignments is on solving communication problems for an organization or business by writing concisely with careful attention to mechanical correctness. This course is useful to people in a variety of majors including business, the sciences, social work, communications, and computer science for careers that will require writing, as well as those planning to go on to graduate school. The final assignment is a writing project in the student’s own discipline. English 336: British Literature:
Restoration to Romanticism. This course will survey the major authors and literary movements from the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 to the crowning of Queen Victoria in 1830--the period in which England (or rather “Great Britain” when Scotland is added to England and Wales in an Act of Union 1707) becomes a major world power. We will attend to how authority is questioned through this time, how the literary arts and other arts contribute to the ideas of the time, and how exploration of the wider world accelerates and invites new questions and perspectives on human identity and human relations (especially apparent in terms of gender, slavery, colonialism, new technologies, and class). The course will begin with an introduction to John Milton’s Paradise Lost, continue with excerpts from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and Aphra Behn’s The Rover, and finish with Lord Byron’s Manfred and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. These readings will be interspersed with representative examples from the poetry of Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth, Samuel T. Coleridge, William Blake, Percy Shelley, Felicia Hemans, and John Keats. We will look at the evolution of literary forms and concepts of this period including satire, the novel, sentimentality, the gothic, the ode, the Byronic hero, genius, the sublime, the picturesque, the conversational poem, etc. Assignments and discussions will offer opportunities to reflectively compare and contrast the values of the period with those of our time and place.
English 355: American Literature:
Realism to Present English 365: Writing of Women In Writing of Women we will read, discuss, and write about texts written by women, about women. Questions we will consider include: What does the designation, “women,” mean as a political and social (as well as biological) construct? How does the construct, “women,” vary by class, race and ethnicity, region and nationality, religion, generation and age, sexual orientation, access to education and the means to earn a living, different abilities? In addition, we will examine how each author’s choice of various formal (structural) elements of fiction—point(s) of view, psychic distance, narrative tense, chronology (or lack thereof), repetition, imagery, symbol, language, etc.—influence our reading of the texts and understanding of the characters. English 377: Nonfiction Writing
Seminar (377 meets with 477; the 477 students mentor 377 students.) English 377 is the first part of the nonfiction writing seminar. We will look at a wide range of contemporary nonfiction, everything from memoir to journalism to writing about science, and students will generate and revise a collection of their own nonfiction. English 401X: Shakespeare and the
English Renaissance This Integration course includes one play each week along with one chapter of the history text each week. We study plays from all four dramatic genres: comedy, history, tragedy, and romance. Film/video labs (optional) feature full-length productions of the plays every Wednesday and Thursday night. Texts are Shakespeare, Works, ed. Bevington, and Smith, This Realm of England. English 403: Advanced Reporting Prerequisite: English 317. English
410X: Robert Frost and New England: Context and Legacy (Note that Eng 410 is a variable topic class; you may count the class multiple times as long as the topic has changed.) The legacy of Robert Frost, one of our most popular and enduring poets, continues to thrive and influence others, but he himself worked within others’ legacies. His writing is closely linked with the Transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson—with crucial differences: Thoreau and Emerson were part of an upper-crust literary elite, while Frost was a mill-town boy and a hard-scrabble farmer. He was also somewhat of a hard-headed pragmatist, grounding his poetry in common rural life, which offered its own kind of (limited) visions. We will examine the different contexts in which Frost wrote, learn about his life and—of course—immerse ourselves in his poetry, and the way that he articulated his own visions. Students enrolled in the course have the option to participate in an exploration seminar during mid-semester break. Exploration Seminar webpage: Frost! English 439: Film and
Literature. Have you ever wondered why some books make great films and others fizzle when they hit the screen? Ever questioned why you should study film? Ever wondered what it takes to begin a career as a popcorn connoisseur? These questions and many more will be answered in English 439: Film and Literature, which counts as a literature elective. This spring we’ll study the intersection between literature and film through various genres, such as the short story, the graphic novel, drama, screenplays, and the novel as well as examine the cultural implications of this study. Through this class you will join a conversation being held on campuses around the United States. Hope to see you there! English 451: Paradise
Re-Imagined: Post-colonial Perspectives on Pacific Islands Literature and
Culture. (Note that Eng 451 is a variable topic class; you may count the class multiple times as long as the topic has changed.) In the Western imagination, the Pacific Islands have been associated with Paradise and visited as the antidote to the complications of modern, civilized life. Yet the contemporary Pacific bears the marks of having been mapped by the transnational flows of colonization, globalization, tourism, and militarism. In re-imagining paradise, we will consider how the production of the image of the Pacific as paradise supports the persistence of colonialism in the region and how the indigenous writers of the Oceanic renaissance have responded with criticism and alternatives to decolonize the minds and souls and bodies that have been illegitimately occupied through these images. To gain a post-colonial perspective on Pacific Islands literature, we will study novels, films, activist and academic essays, stories, poems, and plays by Pacific writers as well as a few beachcombers, settlers, and tourists. The course fulfills the integration requirement for juniors and seniors entering in catalog years before 2007 and the Global Perspectives credit for students entering in 2007 or later. No prerequisites. Students enrolled in the course have the option to participate in an exploration seminar during mid-semester break which will explore the tensions between the displacement and the reclamation of indigenous Hawaiian culture and values in Honolulu. English 477: Advanced Nonfiction
Writing Seminar (377 meets with 477; the 477 students mentor 377 students.) English 477 is the second part of the nonfiction writing seminar. As with English 377, we will look at a wide range of contemporary nonfiction, everything from memoir to journalism to writing about science, and students will generate and revise a collection of their own nonfiction. In addition, 477 students will engage with substantial research projects to support their own creative work, and mentor students in 377. English 488: Senior Capstone in
Literature - From Page to Stage to Screen The focus will be on literary works that moved from the page to being produced as plays, and finally to becoming films. Students will choose works other than class exemplars as the subject of their research. We will apply, in addition to standard literary and film theory, theories of adaptation, performance, and reception.
English 489:
Senior Capstone in Writing
The English Writing Capstone course is designed to increase awareness of the intersections between scholarly writing and creative writing. Students will research, analyze, and write about literary texts and use this analysis to inform subsequent creative work: fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. Work includes 1) a research project in which students research and write a 3000 word (minimum) paper in which they explore and analyze one aspect of writing craft and/or theory and 2) a creative project in which students will use conclusions gained from the research to inform creative projects. These creative projects will be six finished poems, one short story, or one non-fiction essay. With both projects, student work will go through the workshop process: peer and professor critiques together with conferences with the professor. In this course, product will be privileged; the research essays as well as the creative projects will be submitted to suitable journals for publication. The English Writing Capstone course is required for students wishing to receive Honors status in the English Writing major. It is an elective course for students under catalogs prior to 2006.
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