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Spring 2003 Course Descriptions and Booklists
ENGLISH R1A
Course: English R1A
Section: 1
Topic: Plays on Words
Instructor: Katie Vulic
Time: MWF 10-11
Location: 35 Evans Hall
Course Control Number: 28403
We have all probably had the experience of reading a book or play and then
seeing it performed, only to find that we disagree with the way that the performance
differed from our mental image of the way the piece should have looked.
In situations such as these, we have already engaged in a process of interpretationof
constructing imagined sensory experiences based on what we read, and then
confronting those constructions with other possible interpretations.
In this class we will be reading several plays (titles
tentatively listed below) and will read and interpret them ourselves before
then going to see these plays performed. We will be discussing the systems
of interpretation generated by the class and by the performances. Plays
are not instruction manuals for performance so much
as representations of dialogue; in this case, how do readers or directors
make the interpretive leap from dialogue to fully realized scene? Our
class discussions will focus closely on the language of the individual workswe
will be studying the ranges of meaning available in language, and how these
ranges allow us to come to coherent interpretations. We will be exploring
similar ranges of expression in written assignments; we will emphasize the
principles of effective composition in class, and you will have a chance to
develop these skills by drafting and revising analytical essays on the plays.
This class will require you to be available some evenings through the semester.
I expect to have performance dates available when the book list is more certain.
Book List
Note: This book list is subject to change, as it is tied to the
schedules of local theater companies, some of which will be making changes
to their upcoming offerings.
American Buffalo David Mamet
The Chairs Eugene Ionesco
The Constant Wife W. Somerset Maugham
Night and Day Virginia Woolf
Partition Ira Hauptman
The Rehearsal Mark Chappell and Alan Hamilton
Suddenly Last Summer Tennessee Williams
Course: English R1A
Section: 2
COURSE CANCELLED
Course: English R1A
Section: 3
Topic: Down the Rabbit-Hole
Instructor: Fiona Murphy
Time: MWF 2-3
Location: 247 Dwinelle
Course Control Number: 28409
In Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “If,” the speaker proclaims, “If you can trust
yourself when all men doubt you,/...If you can talk with crowds and keep
your virtue,/...Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,/ And --
which is more you’ll be a Man my son!”
In this course we will analyze this contention and the ways in which writers
from a wide variety of literary genres and historical periods have explored
the relationship between the internal self and the external world. To what
extent do our surroundings determine our senses of ourselves? Is identity
intrinsic, depending on an essential integrity of the mind, or extrinsic,
predicated upon response to the demands of a certain environment? Does who
we are depend on where we come from, where we are,
where we’re going? What
can other places, other people, or imaginary worlds teach us about ourselves
and our own culture? Can we ever go back and do we want to? These questions
and others like them will guide our reading and writing about individuals
who choose or find themselves in unfamiliar worlds.
Each student in this course will be required to write five papers and revise
three of them. In addition, each student will make several oral
presentations throughout the term; three on the readings and one on a poem
of the student’s choosing which reflects the themes of the class.
Course Readings:
Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe (Norton)
Swift, Jonathan: Gulliver¹s Travels (Oxford)
Carroll, Lewis: Alice¹s Adventures in Wonderland (Norton)
Hemingway, Ernest: The Sun Also Rises (Scribner)
Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness (Bedford) Sayers, Dorothy L.: Gaudy Night
(Harper)
Strunk and White: The Elements of Style (Longman)
Selected Poetry in Course Reader
** PLEASE USE THE SPECIFIED EDITIONS
Course: English R1A
Section: 4
Topic: Wild Women
Instructor: Linda Chandler
Time: TuTh 9:30-11
Location: 204 Wheeler
CCN: 28412
Texts:
·Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple (1791)
·Hannah Foster, The Coquette (1797)
·Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850)
·Henry James, “Daisy Miller” (1878)
·Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893)
·Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899)
·Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892)
In this class, we will use the theme of “wild women” to develop and improve
your analytic (reading) and writing skills. We will be reading American
literary texts from the late 18th
century through the 19th century.
Some questions we will explore are: What constitutes a “wild woman”?
Are these women “wild” in the same way? Does time period, genre, or
the gender of the author influence notions of femininity? Why do most
of these women share a similar fate? What does their fate and character
representations say about gender constructions or notions of “Americanness”?
These are just some of the questions we will ask. We will also do a
series of composition workshops focusing on introductory, body, and concluding
paragraphs, as well as thesis workshops and prose workshops. Student
writing will be spotlighted in all of the workshops. Three papers, all
of which will be revised, are required, as well as active participation. We
will also (hopefully) have some fun.
Course: English R1A
Section: 5
Topic: Expectations
Instructor: Tina Choi
Time: T/Th 12:30-2:00pm
Location: 78 Barrows
Course Control Number: 28415
All of the readings for this course address the issue of expectations. Each
work concerns, in some way, the expectations of individual characters --
what they hope for, or envision in their futures. At the same time each
narrative manages the expectations of readers, our sense of what will happen
or what things mean. In this course we will also want to think more
generally about how such expectations are shaped by past experiences and
narratives.
The course's primary expectation of students is that they will work to
develop their critical thinking and analytical writing skills. To this end,
class discussions and in-class workshops will be designed to provide
students with ample practice in close reading and with models for
formulating and structuring arguments. Students will be assigned a total of
three papers over the course of the semester; after receiving substantial
commentary from both the instructor and fellow students, each paper will be
revised and resubmitted.
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Herman Melville, Benito Cereno
Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit
Course: English R1A
Section: 6
Topic: Cyborgs and the "Inclusive Embrace"
of Media
Instructor: Suzie Park
Time: TuTh 2-3:30
Location: 283 Dwinelle
Course Control Number: 28418
This course will examine representations of the “cyborg”
or cybernetic organism in literature, critical studies, and film. In
“A Manifesto for Cyborgs,” Donna Haraway
challenges us to think about the cyborg as a way
of imagining what identity could look like: machine extensions of ourselves.
Rather than think of the cyborg as something coined
in the twentieth century, we will place the cyborg
in the larger history of thinking about what it means to be human versus what
it means to be machine-like, and how we represent that difference or overlapping
in narratives and films today. The machine not only substitutes for
human functions in work and play, but can perform beyond human capabilities
(think Terminator or IBM’s super-chess-machine, Deep Blue). Yet there
is always the feeling that machines “go bad.” They can break, short-circuit,
and turn bad on the observing subject. In particular, they can malfunction
emotionallythat is, start to demand emotional returns, criticize
the observers’ emotions or lack thereof, and perhaps worst of all, suggest
that observers are themselves the machines.
We will examine several texts and films in which the protagonist wants to
identify with one’s creator, but discovers that such identification is strongly
forbidden or impossible. We will ask questions about how the term, machine-like,
might be used to exclude or “embrace” certain groups. Why does the machine
signal both hyper-fitness (the beyond human) and total inadequacy (the unfeeling
and therefore definitely not human)? Is it paradoxical to say that machines
feel or is it necessary to think about ourselves as machines that feel?
This class will help students learn to develop a working thesis and write
essays in stages, through the process of sharing ideas out loud and on paper.
Along with regularly assigned one-page response papers to the readings that
we will share in class, we will work in small workshop groups throughout the
semester to help each other write about questions that emerge from reading
and viewing the assigned books and films. For each essay assignment, we will
brainstorm proposals which clearly outline your thesis and main points of
evidence, write rough drafts which will then be exchanged with other workshop
group members in class, offer concrete suggestions for improving the drafted
material, and write final versions of the essay, which may then be shared
again with the class. While we will move from three-page to six-page
critical essays, we will also experiment with genres of writing that address
different audiences; these might include the book review, book jacket blurb,
film review, film preview, and any other genres that the class would like
to try out.
Primary Texts:
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man (1897)
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1963)
Philip Dick, We Can Build You (1994)
Films:
Fritz Lang, Metropolis (1926)
James Whale, The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Stanley Kubrick, A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Ridley Scott, Bladerunner (1982)
John Lasseter, Toy Story (1995)
Bill Condon, Gods and Monsters (1998)
Steven Spielberg, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Course Reader includes:
Samuel Butler, Erewhon (selections, 1872)
E.M. Forster, “The Machine Stops” (1909)
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions
of Man (selections, 1964)
Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form (selections, 1974)
Donna Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs”
(1985)
Gaby Wood, Edison’s Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life
(selections, 2002)
ENGLISH R1B
Course: English R1B
Section : 1
Topic: Love Stories
Instructor: Vlasta Vranješ
Time: MWF 9-10
Location: 204 Wheeler
Course Control Number: 28421
Course Description:
This course is designed to be writing-intensive rather than reading-intensive.
We will therefore devote most of our class-time to honing students’ analytical
and research skills through various writing exercises and assignments.
In addition to completing all writing assignments, students will be expected
to come to class regularly and prepared to discuss the readings. The
texts we will read closely and write about critically, as well as the movies
we will watch, come from a variety of periods and genres and can be (more
or less loosely) characterized as “love stories.” In order to give our
discussions and writing projects as precise a focus as possible, we will examine
what elements of these stories make them “timeless” and how each genre/period
engages with representations of love established or conventionalized by other
genres/periods.
Book List:
Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice
James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
The Course Reader will be a compilation of various poems, short stories,
fairy tales, and essays.
Course: English R1B
Section: 2
Topic: Black Prison Narratives
Instructor: Dennis Childs
Time: MWF 10-11
Location: 47 Evans
Course Control Number: 28424
In this class we will examine Black prison narratives -- along with
those of other oppressed communities -- and the way such narratives interrogate
liberal
tenets such as progress, freedom, democracy, etc. Some questions of concern
will be: Why do prison narratives repeatedly invoke the antebellum period
(slavery) in reference to a supposedly post-slavery moment? What is crime
in the
and reading and will consequently offer students the opportunity to hone
their critical reading and analytical writing skills.
Richard Wright, Black Boy
Alice Walker, The Third Life of Grange Copeland
George Jackson, Soledad Brother
Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography
Leonard Peltier, Prison Writings: My Life is a Sundance
Octavia Butler: Parable of the Sower
Course: English R1B
Section: 3
Instructor: Judith Goldman
Time: MWF 11-12
Location: 61 Evans
Course Control Number: 28427
In this course, we will read and discuss works that address how identity is
consolidated, preserved, disrupted, resistedeven
refused. As we take identity apart and explain it, the most important part
of our project will be to attend to how we construct our own identities as
effective critical readers and writers. To this end, there will be major emphasis
in this class on student writing; students will generate some of the main
texts of the course. We will explore the stakes of identity in the theses
we construct, test, and prove. We will examine, too, how our identities are
reflected in rhetorical concerns, such as the terms we choose to frame our
discussions, self-presentation and positioning, style, and audience. The class
will also focus on honing research skills, use of evidence, and argumentative
technique and strategy.
Course: English R1B
Section: 4
Topic: The Fairy Kind of Writing
Instructor: Pat Schweiterman
Time: MWF 12-1
Location: 242 Dwinelle
Course Control Number: 28430
Texts
John Crowley: Little, Big
Marie de France: The Lais
William Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
A class reader
In this class our focus will
be on representations of fairies in English literature (as it’s most broadly
defined). Over the course of the semester, we’ll explore how the image of
the fairy has answered to the changing cultural needs of different ages. At
different times, fairies have been represented as terrifying beings of more
than human size, and as charming, inch-high dwellers-in-cowslips. Similarly,
fairies have served as both a focal point for longing (for unattainable beauty,
for access to a now inaccessible past, for a world free of sexual restraints)
and as an embodiment of fears (of other races, of power surpassing the human,
of a world free of sexual restraints). While fairies will be the thematic
center of our course, the works we’ll read engage a broad array of topics
that will present us with many “non-fairy” options for both class discussion
and papers.
Our survey will encompass
a wide variety of works in roughly chronological order: medieval historical
texts and fairy romances, Renaissance drama,
tales and ballads collected by 18th
and 19th century folklorists,
essays written by 20th century
scholars, and finally a late 20th
century novel. Besides the titles listed above, we’ll read the anonymous Middle
English romance Sir Orfeo, the Scottish ballad “Tam
Lin,” and John Keats’s “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” as well as a number of
less famous works.
Students will be required
to write three papers. The first two essays will respond to texts studied
in class, and will be revised in consultation with the instructor. The third
essay somewhat longer than the other two will address
a research topic drawn from a range of options. Though the final research
paper will be due the last week of the semester, students will begin work
on it much earlier in the term.
I lay much emphasis
on the mechanics of writing: the development of a thesis and supporting claims,
the provision of evidence, and the structure of a critical essay will all
be topics addressed throughout the semester. Frequent quizzes and exercises
will test students’ grasp of grammar, usage and punctuation. And after each
paper is returned, we’ll devote a class session to problems that surfaced
in a large number of the essays.
Course: English R1B
Section: 5
CLASS CANCELLED
Course: English R1B
Section: 6
Topic: Defamiliarizing Reading
Instructor: Dan Grausam
Time: MWF 2-3
Location: 250 Dwinelle
Course Control Number: 28436
Great writing starts with involved reading that pays attention to the particularities
of a text. While we have all been trained to notice thematic differences between
various works of fiction, this class will be a gentle introduction to the
very particular formal choices authors make with respect to narration and
genre. In other words, here we will be looking at questions of not only what
particular novels are about, but also questions of how that information is
presented to us. As a way of juxtaposing various models of narration,
the class readings will be distinguished by their differences rather than
similarities. Though everything we will be reading was written in the
twentieth century, there won’t be an overriding thematic agenda to the courserather we will be reading for the uniqueness of each
work. Some of the questions we will be asking and thinking through include
what choices do authors have in the temporal orderings of the events of their
stories? What effects do deviations from linear narration have on the reader?
What are the various types of narration, and what pragmatic differences do
they make for one’s reading experience? What degree of intimacy between readers
and characters do specific types of narration assume or allow? What shadow
does autobiography cast on certain works of fiction, and how is the reader’s
position complicated by that shadow? How do certain genresthe crime novel, for instancemodel
a search for “clues” and “proof” that comments on a reader’s own attempts
to find order and meaning? What assumptions do we immediately make about narratorsage, race or gender, for instance-- and what happens
when those assumptions are called into question? These are some of the problems
I’ll be interested in, though the group’s engagements will necessarily and
productively lead us in other directions as well.
All of the texts we will be
reading are quite enjoyable, in addition to being “interesting,” so I expect
that the reading, though intensive, will at least occasionally offer a welcome
change from your work in other classes. In addition to copious reading,
you will be writing quite a bit. I firmly believe in writing as a process,
so expect lots of drafting and revising, leading to a total of three longer
papers you will turn in over the semester. In addition there will be quite
a few shorter assignments designed to kick-start our discussions on particular
texts.
Course: English R1B
Section: 7
CLASS CANCELLED
Course: English R1B
Section: 8
CLASS CANCELLED
Course: English R1B
Section: 9
Topic: The Theater of Vengeance
Instructor: Arthur Bahr
Meeting Time: TTh 8-9:30
Meeting Place: 204 Wheeler
Course Control Number: 28445
In this course we will consider literary productions of three cultures that
were particularly obsessed with the impulse to take vengeance as a means of
righting wrongs, appeasing the divine, or giving comfort to a tormented soul.
Classical Greece, medieval Iceland, and Renaissance England all developed
a taste for works that considered, among other weighty questions, the morality
of vengeance-taking; the consequences of vengeance upon both taker and society;
and what alternative social models might be created that would not depend
upon, or fall into, a cycle of wrongs and retribution. In this course
we will read, from
This course has two principal goals. The first of these is to give you
further opportunities to do analytical thinking, close reading, and college-level
writing. Whatever your major or future career,
formulating complex ideas in an articulate manner will serve you well.
The second goal is to introduce students to strategies of resesarch. To that end, the culminating assignment of
this course will be to construct and articulate a sustained literary argument
in the form of a ten-page research paper. This is all a good deal of
work, so the course itself is no more for the faint of heart than is its subject
matter: mutilation, cannibalism, incest, and family members murdering each
other (in nearly every possible permutation) will all loom large in our reading.
Only the intrepid need apply.
Book List
Æschylus, Oresteia; Sophocles,
Electra; Euripides, Electra; D. Tartt, The Secret
History; anon., Njáls Saga; anon., Egils Saga; T. Kyd, The Spanish
Tragedy; W. Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus; J. Webster, The Duchess of Malfi; Strunk and White, Elements
of Style.
Course: R1B
Section: 10
Topic: Unintentional Consequences
Instructor: Avilah Getzler
Time: TTh 8:00-9:30
Location: 234 Dwinelle
Course Control Number: 28448
Book List:
Jane Austen, Emma
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
John Trimble, Writing with Style
In this class, we will be reading four nineteenth-century novels which
center around the unintended consequences of their characters' actions.
Why, when these characters try to effect a particular outcome, does the
opposite thing happen instead? Did they miscalculate, was there an random
accident, or do actions always have unforeseeable results? Why is the
outcome sometimes comic, and sometimes tragic? And what makes unintentional
consequences such a successful plot device?
This course will teach analytic thinking and reading skills as the core
of good writing: we will examine textual elements such as word choice,
literary form, and narrative structure, and use the evidence we have
gathered to build argumentative essays. Finally, we will learn how to
conduct basic research and integrate the information we have gathered into
our essays.
Course: English 1B
Section: 11
Topic: History and Form in the 20th
Century American Short Story
Instructor: Ruth Jennison
Time: T/Th 9:30-11
Location: 51 Evans
Course Control Number: Spring 2003
We will explore the ends to which American authors
employ the evolving genre of the short story. Over the course of the 20th century, short fiction has served a number
of social, political and cultural purposes. Bearing the traces of diverse
influences, from the magazine serial installment, to the newsprint opinion
piece, to political tracts and propaganda, these short stories will serve
as the basis for discussion of the influence of American history on narrative
form. We’ll chart the evolving forms of short fiction through readings of
works by Dorothy Parker, Richard Wright, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor,
Raymond Carver, and John Cheever, amongst others.
Students should be prepared to acquaint themselves with process of writing
and revision. The writing assignments will be workshopped
extensively, with an emphasis on thesis formation and critical argument.
Required Texts:
The Best American Short Stories of the Century ed. John Updike and
Katrina Kenison
In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction ed., Judith Kitchen
and Mary Paumier Jones
Sudden Fiction: An Anthology of the Short-Short Story ed., Robert Shapard and James Thomas
Flash Fiction: Very Short Stories ed., James Thomas, Denise Thomas
and Tom Hazuka
Course: English R1B
Section: 12
Topic: The Edwardians: English Literature from 1901-1910
Instructor: J. L. Bartlett
Time: T TH 11-12:30
Location: 35 Evans
Course Control Number:
Required Texts: Anna of the Five Towns, Arnold Bennett
The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler
Howards End, E. M. Forster
In a German Pension, Katherine Mansfield
Man and Superman, George Bernard Shaw
Tono-Bungay, H. G. Wells
Course reader
Course Requirements and Information: This course offers instruction in expository
writing, requiring approximately 32 pages of written work. Assignments will
include three revised, synthetic papers on course materials, in-class writing,
peer-editing, frequent participation in class discussion, and office hour
conferences.
Writing about literature is often learned in
something of a social, historical, and critical vacuum, and yet many texts
are inextricable from their cultural contexts. Virginia Woolf
writes, “[T]he Edwardians were never interested in
character in itself; or in the book in itself. They were interested
in something outside. Their books, then, were incomplete as books, and
required that the reader should finish them, actively and practically, for
himself.” In a class like English 1B, a composition course with a designated
research component, we have the opportunity to investigate “incomplete” books,
through close, comparative readings of the Edwardian social moment and the
literature it produced. It was the dizzying decade that brought us psychoanalysis,
quantum and relativity theory, post-Impressionist work by Debussy, Satie,
Cezanne, and Picasso, the rise of socialism and Labour
government, women’s suffrage, the London underground, and the institutionalization
of sociology, cultural events that challenged traditional modes of representation
and renegotiated the relationship between “art” and “life.” We will
examine the ways in which this disorienting moment was rendered, asking some
important rhetorical questions about the authors’ arguments, audience, and
approaches. This should lead us to examine our own adaptive strategies,
the ways we write withinand write ourselves intonew and uncertain contexts.
Course: English R1B
Section: 13
Topic: Tragedy
Instructor: Mike Farry
Time: T Th 12:30-2
Location: 204 Wheeler
Course Control Number: 28457
Tragedy begins as a civic institution in ancient Athens, a dramatic form devoted
to posing questions of political identity: Who gets to participate in the
political relationships that shape a community? Under what circumstances can
one "be" political? What is the limit of the political - where does political identity stop and some other, supposedly non-political,
form of identity begin? What price must be paid when political identification
oversteps its boundaries? And furthermore, what does it mean to participate
in the audience that views this tragic overstepping? Is their a particular
form of political membership involved in being a spectator?
The notion that authors should write tragedies in order to think through these
conditions for political thought, instruction and critique is a notion that
has far outlived the social formations that gave rise to tragedy as a dramatic
genre. The notion has, perhaps, outlasted the genre itself: these days, almost
nobody writes self-described tragedies, yet anybody interested in a career
in politics or otherwise participating in public discourse finds it handy
to call certain sorts of conflicts and upheavals "tragic." Just
what do we think we are up to when we say something is a tragedy? What kind
of community is created when its founding event is defined as a tragedy? By
reading tragic texts written with divergent social and historical problems
in mind, we will consider what kind of work tragedy does as a mode of political
thought.
Both when reading these texts and when developing our writing skills, we will
proceed on George Orwell's premise that "problems in language result
from political and economic causes": in order to improve our writing,
we will have to question the relationship between the words we use as writers
and the social and political problems we inherit as thinkers. The writing
component of this course will therefore build upon the skills of textual analysis
and critical reflection developed by 1A and apply
them to the development of an historically-informed reseach
paper.
Course: English R1B
Section: 14
Topic: Future Imperfect
Instructor: Travis Williams
Days and Time: T/Th 2-3:30
Location: 242 Dwinelle
CCN: 28460
Book List:
Diane Hacker, Rules for Writers: A Brief Handbook
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
P. D. James, The Children of Men
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Mary Shelley, The Last Man
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
This course will train you to write grammatical, concise, stylistically sophisticated,
and convincing expository and analytic prose. We will develop your ability
to close-read a text, develop a thesis, and marshal and analyze evidence in
logically coherent arguments. Class discussions will require participation
based on your careful and active reading at home. Class time will also include
group work, quizzes, and in-class writing. Our attention will be addressed
to five novels and one play that, to one extent or another, present visions
of the future that are politically, socially, and/or culturally 'unpleasant.'
You will write four or five essays, each of which will incorporate exploratory
writing, initial drafts, peer editing, and significant revision. Some of these
texts are difficult and long, and all of them are challenging; you must be
prepared to keep up with the reading. Constant attendance and frequent participation
in class is required.
Course: English R1B
Section: 15
CLASS CANCELLED