|Course Descriptions____________

• 201C: Methods and Materials of Literary Production

This course introduces Creative Writing graduate students to the resources, traditions, techniques, and culture associated with professional creative writing both inside and outside academia. The class will study the role of the individual writer within the literary and academic communities, and explore various forms of literary activity that commonly support "the literary life." Students will learn to find and evaluate dominant and alternative literary magazines and publishers, book review indexes, academic journals, and online and other electronic resources. By means of this course, they will find ways to apply their knowledge of these resources that are useful in their own writing, in their other courses, and in fulfilling other requirements for the MFA. In order to succeed, a Creative Writing MFA student needs to understand how the interlocking networks within the literary, academic, and publishing communities function. To gain such an understanding, students will accomplish the following objectives in this course: Explore the traditions, conventions, sub-genres, and schools, associated with contemporary poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Examine the role of the creative writer within academia. Become familiar with a wide range of literary journals, publishers, and electronic resources for creative writers. Examine evolving genres and new literary forms and forums. Gain a familiarity with some common professional forums and networks for creative writers within academe. Gain familiarity with various avenues for publication and other professional activity. (This course is required of all M.F.A. students and should be taken as early as possible.)

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202: Poetic Craft and Theory

We'll begin the semester with Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook as a review of the basic elements of poetry, and then proceed to a quick survey of the overall evolution of poetic styles and form from medieval to modern times. The central focus of the seminar thereafter will be on the theories of "New Criticism" and the application of those theories to lyric poetry, with particular attention to the sonnet as a genre. We'll study critical works by Cleanth Brooks and I.A. Richards and the sonnets of Shakespeare, Donne, Wordsworth, E.B. Browning, John Berryman, and Vikram Seth, in addition to selected critical works and poems by other writers as well. The aim of the course will not be to give the student an exhaustive knowledge of the sonnet as such, but more generally to challenge his or her analytical skills, at the same time developing the student's sense of historical perspective and critical acumen in dealing with poetry as an art form.

203: Narrative Craft and Theory

SPRING 2008

NOT OFFERED IN SPRING 2008

Agents and publishers say these are the two hottest words in publishing today: narrative nonfiction. Narrative (the art of storytelling) + nonfiction (literature based on fact) = the most powerful of all genres, writing that has the ability to inform, educate and enlighten as it entertains. We will be studying nonfiction literature from a writer's perspective, exploring the techniques of drama, dialogue, characterization, plot, pacing, and scenic construction—which we've stolen from our friends, the fiction writers—to use in the creation of narrative nonfiction. In our efforts to study good storytelling, we will look at a wide variety of materials in this class: movies, short stories, essays, and book-length nonfiction. Most of our time will be spent reading eight narrative nonfiction books, which will present different facets of the genre. These will include works like In Cold Blood, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm. At times we will do in-class writing exercises to experiment with the techniques we're studying.

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204: Seminar in Modern Approaches to Literature

The Russian Formalists argued that what made literary language different from other forms of language was that literature defamiliarizes, making us see the world in a new way. One could argue that the literary theory and criticism of the twentieth century has, in turn, made us see literature in new ways. The semester will be spent in examining various ways critics and theorists have come to see the way literature works, and to form the questions we must ask of texts, of readers, of authors, and of how literature continues to shape the way we see the world around us. We will read and discuss many rigorous and intellectually challenging critical and theoretical readings, mostly from The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.

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208: Seminar in Comparative Literature

SPRING 2008

INSTRUCTOR: Persis Karim DAY: TUESDAY TIME: 7 PM - 9:45 PM

The Legacy of Colonial and Imperial Conquest: Literature of the Modern Middle East and North Africa

This graduate seminar explores the literature of the region that most widely encompasses the modern Middle East and introduces students of the complex regional, historical, and cultural aspects of this geographic area. We will read novels (translated from Arabic, Persian) that introduce us to the ways that the Middle East has been shaped by its great poetic and literary traditions as well as the ways that it has been influenced by literature of the West. To that end we will study poetry, fiction, and some nonfiction, as well as read the work of a number of theorists who either employ postcolonial theory, or who address more specifically the nature of writing and texts from the Middle East and North Africa.

Among the works we will read are: Naguib Mahfouz's Midaq Alley, Abdelrahman Munif's Cities of Salt, Assia Djebar's La Fantasiya (L'Amour, La Fantasia), Tayib Salih's Season of Migration to the North, and Simin Daneshvar's Savushun, and Ghassan Kanafani's Men in the Sun. These texts will introduce us to issues of history, gender, orientalism, and the position of these writers in today's modern Middle East. I guarantee this course is socially relevant and very engaging!

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211: 20th Century Poetry

SPRING 2008

INSTRUCTOR: Sam Maio DAY: TUESDAY TIME: 7 PM TO 9:45 PM

We will treat the major metrical poets of the modern era—Hardy, Yeats, Auden, Frost—as well as key poets of the counter-tradition—Pound, Eliot, and Lowell. Two in-class presentations and one significant research paper will comprise the graded evaluation for the course.

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216: Medieval Literature

From knights in shining armor to the black death of plague, medieval literature has it all: mystery and adventure, romance and riddles, bawdy burlesque and biblical allegory, lilting lyrics and savage sagas. Join our combined undergraduate/graduate class and read some of the most beautiful and fascinating works ever written. Undergraduates will write weekly reader responses, a take-home midterm exam, a research-informed paper (8-10 pages), and a final essay exam. Graduate students will write weekly reader responses; write an evaluation of and present a scholarly article; lead the class discussion of one assigned reading; write a scholarly critical paper (18-20 pages) using both primary and secondary sources; and prepare, present, and distribute to the class an informational abstract of their critical paper, with an annotated bibliography.

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217: English Renaissance

SPRING 2008

NOT OFFERED IN SPRING 2008

A study of lyric poetry and drama, of Platonism and passion, a study of the courtier and the poet and their attitudes towards women, language, and reality. We begin with The Courtier by Castiglione and end with realitywith love, incest, and death in John Ford's Tis a Pity She's a Whore. Students who have had little background in Renaissance literature should read or review The Sixteenth Century as well as the works of Donne, Jonson, and Webster in The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Any edition will do. Students will give a few seminar reports, take one midterm, and write a critical paper.

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225: Seminar in Shakespeare: Shakespeare and the Nation

This graduate seminar in Shakespeare will introduce you to many of the current issues in Shakespeare Studies, especially a number of new-historical concerns: writing the nation, the material book of the new textualism, the invention of authorship, and original staging. My own research falls mostly into the category of the early modern project of the "nation" and the primary works I've selected for our seminar will allow us to grapple with how the English tried to make their nation come into being. We'll focus on two sets of plays: the Henriad, a tetralogy of four great history plays and a subtending comedy, and the Roman plays, four excellent tragedies and an attendant romance. One narrative poem will round out our discussion. While the thrust of these choices will be toward histories and tragedies, we will also touch on other genres in which Shakespeare wrote, giving us a chance to explore a comedy and a romance. We'll talk about other ways to get into Shakespeare too, especially with reference to recent film versions and some film criticism, as well as other theoretical modes and approaches to texts.

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232: Romanticism

SPRING 2008

NOT OFFERED IN SPRING 2008

“William Wordsworth: Questioning a Literary Lion”:
William Wordsworth, 1770-1850. Author of Lyrical Ballads and The Prelude. Husband to Mary. Friend to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (sometimes). Collaborator with sister, Dorothy. Father of five children and the Romantic Period.

We know these things about William Wordsworth, but what of the relationships, cultural change and social upheaval that surrounded him during his sixty-year career? Why is he lauded as the literary lion of the Romantic Period? Can we study the impact of his personal relationships with other authors? Does his literary genius impact the generations of Victorians who would live alongside and supersede his poetic triumphs? In this course, we will explore not only the life of William Wordsworth, but also his literary legacy. We will also question his reputation as this literary lion by reading the contemporary poets who influenced him, e.g., Charlotte Smith. In this seminar, we will not necessarily dismantle the hero worship surrounding Wordsworth but will instead re-orient his literary status. By the end of the semester we shall see that Wordsworth was not a single man, writing alone, fathering a literary movement. Instead, he is both a community and part of a community of authors who were responsible for eventually welcoming the Twentieth-Century Modernists. Readings include creative as well as non-fiction writings, including authors' letters, Coleridge's poetry, Wollstonecraft's Letters, Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Charlotte Smith's sonnets, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and a treatise on the 1842 Copyright Act (which Wordsworth helped to create). Both Marilyn Gaull's English Romanticism: The Human Context and digital representations of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century culture will orient our historical context. This course serves as both an introduction to Romantic studies as well as an exploration of particular themes within its literature. Assignments include a primary sources essay, short essay and oral presentation, long research essay and weekly reading responses (posted to our course listserv).

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233: The Victorian Period

This seminar will examine significant literary works written circa 1830 and 1900. We will supplement our readings with important pieces of Victorian art and music. We will read The Old Curiosity Shop, The Mill on the Floss, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and the Victorian section of The Norton Anthology. One short essay, one seminar research project and two class presentations are required.

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240: Poetry Writing Workshop

SPRING 2008

INSTRUCTOR: Alan Soldofsky DAY: WEDNESDAY TIME: 4 PM - 6:45 PM

Course Theme: “Improvisation and Subversion: “The Jazz of Writing Poems”

English 240 is an Graduate poetry writing workshop in which students will write and revise new poems throughout the semester. The course will also include discussions of the craft of poetry and contemporary poetics. We will write a number of poems during the semester based on the influence of jazz as well as other forms of contemporary and popular music. In addition, we will read a selection of poems and essays written by poets as diverse as Allen Ginsberg, Rita Dove, Tony Hoagland, Langston Hughes, Yusef Komunyakaa, Larry Levis, Nathaniel Mackey, William Matthews, Ishmael Reed, Quincy Troupe, and Kevin Young about jazz and popular music as a source of poetic inspiration. We will also read and listen to recordings of poems based upon interactions or collaborations between the poet and musicians. By the end of the course, each student will finish a poem based upon a particular piece of music or a poem to be performed in collaboration with a musician(s). The piece can be presented either as a text or a live or recorded performance (or both). Class members will be given to opportunity to perform their works at the end of the semester for an audience.

English 240 is a course required for students in the MFA program whose primary or secondary genre is poetry. Students in the MA program who write poetry at the advanced level may also be admitted (space permitting) with the instructor’s permission. The course may be repeated twice for credit. Conditionally classified graduate students must also obtain the instructor’s permission to enroll in the course.

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241: Seminar in Fiction Writing

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242: Non-Fiction Writing Workshop

Nonfiction writing as preparation for thesis. Study and critique of canonical and contemporary nonfiction. Intensive workshop experience.

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253: Seminar in Period Studies of American Literature

SPRING 2008

INSTRUCTOR: John Engell DAY: TUESDAY TIME: 2 PM - 4:45 PM

The American Novel: Romanticism, Realism, & Naturalism, c1820-c1920. We will study six American Novels, three--James Fenimore Cooper's THE PIONEERS, Nathaniel Hawthorne's THE SCARLET LETTER, and Harriet Beecher Stowe's UNCLE TOM'S CABIN--from the "Romantic" period of American literature and three--Mark Twain's ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, Frank Norris's MCTEAGUE, and Edith Wharton's THE AGE OF INNOCENCE--from the "Realist"/"Naturalist" period of American literature. Our broad discussion topics will include the relationship of romanticism and realism/naturalism, the relationship of American novels to national and international cultural and literary developments from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century, and the evolution of the criticism and the reception of each novel. Our additional focus will be on very close readings of all six novels. Each student will deliver six short oral presentations, each of which will be accompanied by a one-page handout and a two-page paper. Each student will also write a 10-12 page research essay.

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254: Seminar in Genre Studies of American Literature

The Literature of Social and Political Change

Some of the literature of socio-political intent is sentimental, some sensationalist, some as didactic as Plato’s The Republic. Whether sentimental, sensational, teacherly, preacherly, or stealthy in its approach, however, a great deal of American literature has been produced from the desire to change the world. Politically engaged literature took a critical beating in the past century, as the New Criticism elevated the art object above the fray of particular political and social conflicts, but the critical schools that flowered in soil turned over by the New Criticism have argued that art is always implicated in the cultural conflicts that produce power and wealth. Instead of looking for the hidden or subconscious intent in works that ask to be accepted as “nonpolitical,” this course will focus on literature which overtly engages the social and political issues of its day. We will consider this literature in the light of aesthetic standards and from recent critical perspectives such as Deconstruction, Marxism, Feminism, Queer Studies, and Postcolonialism. Some authors to be considered include Sherman Alexie, Amiri Baraka, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Lorraine Hansberry, Upton Sinclair, Dalton Trumbo, Helen Hunt Jackson, John Steinbeck, David Henry Hwang, Margaret Atwood, and Richard Wright.

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255: Thematic Studies in American Literature

“Racial and Ethnic Identity Formation in American Literature”
How is identity shaped? Is it innate or culturally constructed? How do class, gender, religion, and or sexuality affect how one sees oneself or one’s ethnicity? How do others see us? How have minority identities been constructed by mainstream American culture and how has the struggle to self-define these identities in turn shaped American literary culture? Twentieth-century prose fiction will be our main focus but texts examined will include a wide range of ethnic communities, settings, and methods, including Ralph Ellison’s iconic Invisible Man and an example of Hawaiian “Local Literature” such as Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers. Expect to write a long research paper, an annotated bibliography and proposal, present on one of the texts during the course of the semester, and contribute weekly discussion questions and comments. Readings will include the primary literary works as well as relevant theoretical and critical essays.

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256: Twentieth-Century British Literature

The first half of the course will be devoted to a study of novels by Conrad, Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf, Beckett, and Amis. The second will cover the poetry of Yeats, Auden, Thomas, Larkin, Heaney, McGuckian, Carson, and Muldoon.

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257: History of Rhetoric

The course will introduce the student to the theory and practice of composition teaching, from a survey of classical rhetoric (and its concern with persuasion, arrangement, audience, levels of style, and so on), to more recent work in the writing field (with its interest in issues like the process-versus-product debate, writing as discovery, and the student-centered classroom, gender studies, and computer-aided instruction). In becoming more familiar with the lore of writing instruction, you will learn about prewriting, sentence and paragraph instruction, revision techniques, evaluating student writing, designing courses, selecting texts, and miscellaneous other activities involved with writing and the teaching of writing. Texts: Corbett, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student; Murray, Learning By Teaching.

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259: Composition Studies

English 259 will address a broad range of topics in composition studies, including how students write and revise, how teachers evaluate compositions, and how instructors can design courses to accommodate a diverse student community. We will examine the styles, genres, and audiences available to student writers. We will address both highly practical issues (preventing plagiarism, surviving holistic scoring sessions) and those with a more theoretical flavor (liberating education, second-language acquisition). The required reading load will be light, so expect to do lots of independent research. Major assignments will include a seminar paper/project and presentations to the class.