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Course Offerings, Spring 2008  

[200-400 level ENGL courses] [500 level ENGL courses] 
[600-level ENGL courses]
[ENGE and related courses]

[300-400 level WRIT courses] [ 500-level WRIT courses ]
[600-level WRIT courses]

[Undergraduate Catalog]  [Graduate Catalog] [Schedule of Courses]
[Register Online ] [Summer Course Offerings in ENGL and WRIT]

[Inventory Sheets That Show What You Need to Take!]

Note: Students seeking overrides must see Dr. Jones.

WRIT 101, CRTW201: Click here to go to the Writing Program course page.

Undergraduate English Courses

ENGL 200 section 01. The Lord of the Rings. Bird. We will read, discuss, and study J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. We will examine topics such as myth, the hero journey, Tolkien’s literary models, his life, his times, and the lasting impact of the trilogy on world culture. We will also compare the books to the Peter Jackson film version. Students should have previously read The Hobbit. Not all who wander are lost, and may a star shine on the hour of our meeting! Pending university approval, three credits of ENGL 200 may apply to undergraduate degrees in English. TR 2:00-3:15.

 ENGL 200 section 02. The Butler Didn't Do It: Detective Fiction Past and Present . Cothran. This course will look at two centuries worth of fictional thefts and murders, as well as a host of quirky, crazy, charming, and brilliant detectives. Specifically, we will be looking at texts by Wilkie Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Elizabeth George, Patricia Cornwell, and others. The class will explore the evolution of the detective character as a unique literary type and also get a sense of the historical development of the crime novel. In addition to a paper based on a mystery novel (of your choice) read outside of class, students will be required to take essay tests, a final exam, and will write at least one formal, researched critical essay. Pending university approval, three credits of ENGL 200 may apply to undergraduate degrees in English. TR 11:00-12:15.

ENGL 200 section 03. Science Fiction: From Frankenstein to the Present. Rankin. Through the works of Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells, Ronald Wright, Ray Bradbury, Aldous Huxley, Arthur C. Clark, and Alan Lightman, students will explore such themes as time, religion, human perfection, freedom, and morality. No quizzes or exams. Heavy emphasis on class participation that reflects careful and thoughtful reading of the assignments. One critical book review and three deliberative papers. Pending university approval, three credits of ENGL 200 may apply to undergraduate degrees in English. MW 2:00-3:15.

ENGL 203. Major British Authors. DeRochi. A study of major British writers: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and representative figures from the Neoclassical, Romantic, Victorian, Modern, and Postmodern eras. We will attempt to represent the major literary genres and to get a sense of both the historical development of British culture and some major critical approaches to the works under study.

ENGL 203. Major British Authors. Naufftus. This course looks at the entire literary history of the British Isles and necessarily does so very selectively since we have only fourteen weeks. We will begin with Beowulf (Old English) and then move on to Chaucer (Middle English) before ending the first half of the course with Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Donne (Early Modern English). The second half will begin with Milton and will then examine a representative writer or two from each of the following periods of literary history: Neoclassicism, Romanticism, the Victorian Age, Modernism, and Postmodernism. One major goal of the course is to make the student familiar with the characteristics of each period; another is, of course, to develop your acquaintance with the work of some of our best writers; a third is to give you experience in writing literary analyses. We will spend time with narrative and lyric poetry; with drama and with novels; with comedy, tragedy romance and satire. There will be short essays, tests and an examination.

ENGL 208. Foundations of World Literature. Bickford. This course is designed to familiarize students with great works of world literature representing the Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance periods and also significant, chronologically comparable works from the Non-Western tradition. Students will engage in discussion, critical thinking, and analytical writing about diverse literary traditions and individual works. In addition to in-class writing, essay tests, and a final exam, students will be required to write at least one formal, researched critical essay. Note: Replaces ENGL 207 for all programs requiring that course.

ENGL 211. Survey of American Literature. Childers or Jordan. Study of the major periods, literary forms, and issues that characterize American literature, with a consideration of representative major works and authors over the course of American literary history. Note: A student may not receive credit for both ENGL 211 and ENGL 209 or 210.

ENGL 300. Approaches to Literature. Bickford. This writing intensive course required of all English majors and minors introduces students to the evolving study of literary criticism.  The course covers critical approaches from the past and present as well as looks toward possible future developments in criticism.  We begin with a study of formalism and then move to detailed examinations of the dominant critical schools of the twentieth century, including reader response, psychoanalysis, structuralism, feminism, new historicism, deconstruction, gender studies, and postcolonialism.  Students choose a primary text on which to base their major written assignments – an annotated bibliography, a review of literature, a casebook, and a critical essay.  Other requirements include short essays and a cumulative final.  Textbooks support all aspects of the course and are a casebook made up of a primary work and five essays displaying varying critical approaches, an introduction to critical theory, the most current MLA handbook, and a handbook to literature. Note: Writing Intensive Course.  Restricted to English majors and minors.  Prerequisite: sophomore standing.

ENGL 303. Grammar. Jones. This course reviews traditional grammar with an emphasis on descriptive methodology (how our language functions) and introduces transformational and structuralist grammars. Students will be required to write two "problem" papers, take three exams, and prepare and teach a mini-lesson on some grammatical concept. Primarily intended for students planning to teach. 

ENGL 310/310H. Special Topics in Literature: Contemporary British Literature - Booker Prize Novels of the 1990s. Brownson. The Man Booker Prize, founded in 1969, is one of the most recognized literary awards in world literature.  Administered by the National Book League in Great Britain, it is awarded to fiction written in English by a citizen of Great Britain, The Republic of Ireland, Pakistan, South Africa, or any of the countries formerly part of the British Commonwealth.  Writers of serious fiction who develop thematic issues concerning personal, emotional, and spiritual tribulations, colonization, isolation, and the challenges of living at the end of the twentieth century as well as the beginning of the twenty-first have garnered this prestigious award.  Booker Prize winners during the decade of the nineties are an especially rich group for examining the state of the contemporary British novel not only because the author’s nationalities are particularly diverse – British, Nigerian, Ceylonese, Irish, Scottish, Bengali, South African, and Canadian –  but because these authors approach storytelling in both traditional and innovative ways.  While our major focus will be on the decade of the nineties, we may also read one or two novels from the early 2000’s.  We will discuss the novels awarded the Man Booker Prize during this period, approaching them not only as individual works but also as reflections of the authors’ worldviews and of the issues important to readers and writers at the end of the twentieth century as well as the beginning of the twenty-first.  Course requirements will include energetic discussion, reading responses, midterm and final exams, and a critical essay.

ENGL 312. African American Literature. Dennis. English 312 is a survey in African American literature. Students will explore a representative sample of the body of African American literature, beginning with the foundations in music and oral culture and progressing through the major cultural and literary periods of African American literary production. Students will be asked to explore, among other ideas, the connection between the history and the literature that results, the role of the African American artist, and whether or not there is such a thing as a Black Aesthetic. Prerequisite(s): ENGL 209 or 210 or 211 or AAMS 300 or permission of instructor. Notes: Cross-listed with AAMS 318.

ENGL 320. The Inklings (plus one). Herring. This special topics course will explore the writings of four of the best known Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield and Charles Williams. Although not an Inkling (the “club” was limited to men only), Dorothy Sayers was a long-time Lewis correspondent, and the two discussed writings presented to the Inklings. Her work will also be examined. Two works from Lewis, Barfield, Owens, Williams and Sayers will be read with only one from Tolkien. Papers, presentations, and class discussions will be expected of each participant. (Although the Inklings met at the Eagle and Child pub [known to them as the Bird and Baby] it’s improbable that this class will meet at the Gin Mill!)

ENGL 325. Dramatic Literature. DeRochi. English 325 examines the development of drama throughout history, paying special attention to major periods of dramatic literature, such as Classical, Renaissance, French Neoclassical, English Restoration, and 20th-Century American and British. By analyzing drama through a progression of literary periods, we will explore historical and cultural contexts and note essential recurrent themes. In addition, we will consider the philosophies behind various advancements in theatrical production, and how such advancements influenced the texts themselves. Playwrights we will read include but are not limited to Sophocles, Christopher Marlowe, William Wycherley, Anton Chekov, Eugene O’Neill, and David Mamet.

ENGL 491. Departmental Seminar. Richardson. This course assesses student mastery of English coursework. Students complete several assessment measures--including content knowledge tests, an essay test, and the Senior Opinionaire . Although the tests are individually graded , and students receive their test results , they receive an S or U for the course. The results are then summarized anonymously and used to improve instruction in the English Department. Prerequisite: Should be taken in the first semester of the senior year (after the student has completed 90 hours).  

Upper Division ENGL Courses

500-level Courses Require Graduate Standing or Completion of Prerequisites for Enrollment.

Check the Current Catalog for Prerequisites for Each Course.

 

ENGL 503. Victorian Literature. Naufftus. Once we get past the clichés about Victorian prudery and industrial squalor, we can see that the writers of this period dealt with many problems which still preoccupy us today: the appeal of the Christian religion and the doubts about its truth, the need to balance economic growth with the survival of the environment and the welfare of workers, the best gender roles for men and women, and the challenges of dealing with the non-Western world. We will look at these themes (and others) in the work of four poets (Tennyson, Browning Arnold, and Swinburne) and one playwright (Oscar Wilde). Since the Victorian age is one of the great periods for non-fictional prose, we will read short selections from autobiographies, histories, criticism of the arts and analyzes of society. For most students, this will be the least familiar aspect of the course; writers will include Carlyle, Mill, Ruskin, Newman, and Arnold. For many readers, the novels are the most appealing aspect of the period, and I want us to be guided by your interests. We will begin the course with Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist; but the rest if the fiction will be chosen by the class from a list I will provide on the first day. Graduate and undergraduate students will have short papers, a midterm, and a final exam. Each graduate student will also write a research paper and make an oral presentation.

ENGL 510. Reading Robert Frost. Wilcox. Close reading of Robert Frost’s major poems, with excursions into minor works--- poetry, prose, letters, notebooks. Some attention will also be given to the numerous biographies of the poet. Knowledge of critical approaches to poetry and versification helpful.

ENGL 511. Chaucer. Koster. This course provides a broad acquaintance with the works of "The Father of English Poetry," beginning with his early dream narratives, moving through his Boethian tragedy Troilus and Criseyde, and concluding with his unfinished masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales. Along the way we will discuss the Middle English language, cultural and historical events such as the Black Death and the Hundred Years' War, the rise of a vernacular reading audience, the roles played by women, the instability of texts transmitted in a manuscript culture, and the rhetorical impact of farting, interior decoration, and talking chickens. A variety of critical and theoretical approaches will be presented. Requirements: a sense of humor, several tests, an oral presentation (graduate students), a substantive research paper, and engaged class participation. Prerequisite ENGL 201 or 203 and WRIT 102 or CRTW 201 with a grade of C or better, or graduate status.

ENGL 514. Elizabethan Literature. Fike. English 514—offered for graduate and undergraduate credit and centered on three main figures:  Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare—surveys poetry, prose narratives, drama, and critical theory of the Elizabethan period (1558–1603). The course divides into three units. The first unit uses Philip Sidney’s An Apology for Poetry to set a context for the works of Edmund Spenser. Unit two relates the works of Marlowe to Christian martyrology and travel literature. (The unit’s highlight will be Marlowe’s Edward II, which the theater department will be staging during Spring 2008—earn extra credit for attending.) Unit Three considers Shakespeare’s nondramatic poetry in connection with works on love and works by women (especially the work of Anne Lock, whose prose a former students called “the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read”). The course requires a midterm examination to be written in class, four response papers, a longer researched essay, a final examination, and participation. 

Graduate ENGL Courses

Graduate Standing is required to register for 600-level courses.

ENGL 602. Literary Criticism. Bird. This course will be an intensive seminar in critical theory, beginning with an historical survey (from Plato and Aristotle to Freud and Sartre) and culminating in study of 20th century critical movements (formalist, reader-response, deconstructive, psychoanalytic, feminist, Marxist, New Historicist, and so on). The readings will be in essential primary texts. Students will read, discuss, write short and long papers, and make presentations. This course is intensive and challenging, but it should be an excellent learning experience.

ENGL 611. Late 19th-Century American Literature--Realism & Naturalism. Richardson. David Shi’s Facing Facts: Realism in American Thought and Culture, 1850-1920 includes this provocative quotation from Walt Whitman: “A true poem is the daily newspaper.”  In this course, we will consider the implications of such a statement by studying the growth of realistic and naturalistic theory and practice. For example, we will explore some of the following questions: 1) What exactly is the goal of this approach to art?2) Why was it so popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century? 3) Why did it replace Romanticism?  4) How did the literary form intersect with other aesthetic expressions of art, photography, and architecture?  5) What are the limits of such an approach?  Authors will include (but not necessarily be limited to) Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, Kate Chopin, and Frank Norris.  Class will be conducted as a seminar, with students making major contributions to the content of the course.  Students will make presentations to class, write one long and several short critical essays, and participate in and lead discussions. A cumulative final exam will also be given.

ENGL 618. Experience Liberated: Seminar in the Romance. Koster. Corinne Sanders has argued, “[r]omance is often self-conscious, reflecting some degree of choice against realism, and demonstrating over the course of literary history the enduring power and relevance—social, intellectual, emotional—of a mode of writing underpinned by the imaginative use of the symbolic and the fantastic, by idealism, and by universal motifs such as quest and adventure” (2004: 4). In this seminar we will examine the genre of romance—which Henry James calls “experience liberated” from the requirements and limitations of realism—as it evolves over time and cultures, both Western and non-Western. We'll begin in ancient Greece and medieval France and Asia; travel to the Iberian peninsula; and move through Germany, Britain, the United States, India, and Colombia. We will track the rise and fall of its prestige, the effects of rationalism, gender, and literacy on its popularity and reputation, and current writers’ attempts to rehabilitate this genre of adventure, identity, and transformation. Although the final reading list is open to some negotiation, we’ll likely be reading works by Heliodorus, Ovid, Chrétien de Troyes, Murasaki Shikibu, Cervantes, Goethe, Brontë, Hawthorne, Heyer, Prawer Jhabvala, Byatt, and García Márquez, as well as relevant critical perspectives. Students will produce a significant piece of writing that will be suitable either for publication or presentation at a professional meeting as well as participate actively in class discussion and leadership. (Students who need to use this course for non-Western literature credit will be able to do so.) Bodice-ripping, dueling, and chain-rattling optional (but if anyone can produce a handsome but scarred earl or duke, extra credit will be given).

Upper Division Writing Courses

WRIT 300. Rhetorical Theory. Gerald.  A historical survey of rhetorical theory, classical through contemporary, with emphasis on rhetoric’s shifting trends across the ages and its manifestation in contemporary discourse. Class will center around brief, frequent writings in response to primary and secondary texts, as well as a larger research project and group and individual projects and presentations. Writing Intensive Course. Prerequisite: CRTW 201.

WRIT 307.  Fiction Writing. Ely. This class is a workshop. Students will submit their work to the workshop and participate in workshop discussions. Students will write two stories and make extensive revisions. Students will learn to read like writers. Also students will read at least two books: a short story collection and one of the following: a biography, a collection of letters, or a book on the creative process, all with the aim in mind of examining their own creative process.

WRIT 316. Poetry Writing. Weeks. The focus of this course is on student poetry, which will be discussed and critiqued in a workshop format. In addition to working on class poems, students will read the work of contemporary published poets and will do oral reports on recent collections of poems. A public reading of poems written in the class will be given at the end of the semester. Grades will be based on a portfolio of poems (with revisions) as well as on workshop participation and oral reports.

WRIT 431, 432, 433: Academic Internships in English. See your advisor or Ms. Montgomery. These courses allow students academic credit for supervised application of skills learned in the major. Students register for these courses after arrangements have been made with their advisors and have been approved by the chair. Prerequisites: 12 hours of ENGL (incl. ENGL 300) and/or WRIT courses beyond WRIT 102, a 2.5. GPA, and permission of the department chair. See Dr. Jones.

WRIT 461, 462: Internship in Science Communication. See Dr. Rankin.

WRIT 465. Preparation for Oral and Written Reports. Staff. This oral- and writing-intensive course simulates the kinds of communication tasks found in the workplace: producing appropriate, correct, and effective documents and oral presentations customized for particular audiences on short deadlines. The major focus of the class is on creating and presenting a long feasibility study or business plan based on a series of shorter assignments. Students also learn to use electronic communication tools effectively and develop a customized resume and job application package. There are frequent graded short writing assignments, revision assignments, electronic assignments, and oral presentations. Prerequisite: Junior standing.

Upper-Division and Graduate Writing Courses

WRIT 610. Seminar in Composition Theory and Pedagogy. Smith. Students in this class will gain knowledge about their own composing process, about theories of composition and rhetoric, and about the teaching of composition in the schools. This course will involve intensive analysis of theory as well as an exploration of pedagogical practice. There will be assignments geared specifically toward the teaching of writing (for example, designing writing assignments, grading student papers). Because the class is a seminar, students will be expected to be active learners, fully participating in class discussion and analysis of texts. Students will write in a variety of formats: there will be a major research paper and a final exam as well as several informal writing assignments.

English Education Courses

EDUC 475. Internship in Reflective Practice.  Furr, Neary. This class is a field experience in the public schools that lasts 55-60 days. As a full-time student teacher, the student will be observed by the university content area supervisor; undergraduate students are required to register for and complete a co-requisite (EDUC 490) that will be scheduled by the College of Education. However, both undergraduate and graduate students will be required to spend a minimum of eight hours of classroom time with the content area supervisor, during which time issues related to student teaching will be handled. These sessions will always begin after the end of the public school day and may sometimes take place during dinner meetings.

ENGE 519. Adolescent Literature.  Neary. Adolescent Literature focuses on the selection and evaluation of suitable reading material from all literary genres for the young adult, with special attention to the cognitive development, psychology, and needs of the adolescent. Students will complete a number of hands-on activities, as well as three individual or group-based projects, which may consist of lesson plans, performances, and responses to issues related to young adult literature. Special attention will be given to gender dynamics in the classroom, working with non-print media, special needs issues, multiculturalism and the canon, censorship, and student-centered curriculum in the teaching of literature. Although Adolescent Literature is designed primarily for students in the English Education track, the course is also suitable for other majors who may be interested in exploring how literature is used in social work, psychology, and other areas that involve working with young adults.  

EDUC 690. Secondary School Internship. Furr, Neary. This class is a field experience in the public schools that lasts 55-60 days. As a full-time student teacher, the student will be observed by the university content area supervisor; undergraduate students are required to register for and complete a co-requisite (EDUC 695) that will be scheduled by the College of Education. However, both undergraduate and graduate students will be required to spend a minimum of eight hours of classroom time with the content area supervisor, during which time issues related to student teaching will be handled. These sessions will always begin after the end of the public school day and may sometimes take place during dinner meetings.

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