Course Descriptions

Instructor:  Gertken, M.            Areas:  n/a

Unique #:  34575            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: This course, for both English majors and non-English majors, aims to provide a broad-minded introduction to reading, writing and interpreting great literature, with a special emphasis on how this literature helps make sense of life in the twenty-first century global economy.

You will learn how to read more attentively, think more analytically, debate more effectively, write more concisely, and imagine history more vividly. Particular emphasis falls on writing and re-writing. These skills will prepare you for any upper-division classes, and all future careers and walks of life.

We will focus on a number of great works by great authors – books that you will be glad to have read, and will never forget. We will study the lives of the authors and the relevant historical background, but will especially focus on literary techniques and big ideas. By the end of the class you will be able to write convincingly about the artistic, cultural, historical, and philosophical significance of a handful of the world’s greatest writers.

We will also study and practice the techniques of fine writing. You will learn the art of close reading – analyzing literary style, the core elements of the English language, and the use of literary devices. You will gain a fuller appreciation of the different genres of literature, the variety of literary characters and themes, and other aspects of literary craftsmanship. You will also hone your critical writing skills and learn how to use handy reference tools, like the Oxford English Dictionary and online databases.

With economic crisis as our subject, we will study how literature intersects with “political economy,” a wide term connecting economics with the humanities. We will study literary depictions of how humans balance their material interests with immaterial opinions and values. Several themes will recur, such as poverty and wealth, country and city, personal merit and family inheritance, charity and greed, entrepreneurship and cronyism, credit and debt, individual freedom and public spirit, corporate power and government power, and more.

Tentative list of readings: The Sermon on the Mount; Dante, Inferno; Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice; Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal”; Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography; Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations; Frédéric Bastiat, “The Petition of the Candlemakers”; Dickens, Hard Times; Émile Zola, Money; Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier; Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath; Brett Easton Ellis, American Psycho; plus course packet with short selections from criticism.

Requirements & Grading: Assignment specifics to be distributed; all details subject to change until final syllabus. Short quizzes (5% of total); eight one-page papers, with revisions, in response to readings (5% each, 40% of total); final paper, 5-7 pages (25% for first draft, 30% for second). Required: Attendance (more than two unexcused absences will affect grade); punctuality; completion of reading and writing assignments. Please Note: All assignments must be completed satisfactorily in order to receive a passing grade.

Instructor:  Cowles, L.            Areas:  n/a

Unique #:  34585            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  Yes

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: When asked if stories can represent a philosophical position more effectively than a philosopher can argue it, writer and philosopher Jorge Luis Borges said yes. “Fictions,” he answered, “are far more convincing than the syllogism.” That is to say, some literature makes philosophical points better than works of pure philosophy do. Students in this course will investigate how, why and to what effects literature and philosophy communicate with one another. The class helps students prepare for upper-division courses in English and many other disciplines via close reading, research, discussion, and critical writing, and by introducing formal, historical, and cultural approaches to a variety of texts. Students learn how to use library resources like the Oxford English Dictionary and others essential to informed study in any discipline. It appeals to English majors interested in philosophical topics, authors, or methods or to students outside of the English Department who want to earn a writing flag and study ideas and ideologies that inform discussions and debates in fields ranging from economic theory or military strategy to philanthropy or aesthetics.

Readings span multiple genres to include poems, plays, novels, and essays, and students will mold the course syllabus to fit their interests. That is, students are required to build and have approved by the instructor a reading list of at least four additional texts suited to their scholarly inclinations.

Required course texts include selections from: Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat; Voltaire, Candide; Wallace Stevens, Collected Poems; Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being; Cowhig, Lidless (entire play); and others.

Requirements & Grading: Reading quizzes and one in-class presentation, 16%; One-page homework assignments, 8%; Three short essays (2–3 pages each), 30%; Research paper on whether or not Borges is right and why (5–8 pages), 30%; Class participation and peer review of other students’ papers, 16%.

Instructor:  Ortiz y Prentice, C.            Areas:  n/a

Unique #:  34600            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  Yes

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: Ever since Sigmund Freud found Oedipus at the crossroads, his father's blood in his hands, literature and psychology have shared a common destiny. But in fact, since its beginnings in the eighteenth century, modern psychology has shared with imaginative literature concerns like insanity, sexual identity, agency, and cognition. Because what literature portrays cannot be experimentally verified, it cannot serve as scientific evidence. Nevertheless, psychologists from the early associationists to the psychoanalysts, behaviorists, and cognitive scientists who followed have all used literature to guide their inquires. In turn, the science of the psyche has influenced the form and content of novels and poems.

This course explores key literary and psychological works in which the two fields become deeply indebted to one another.  The course is designed with both English majors and non-English majors in mind. The skills it focuses on will help students succeed in upper-division courses in many majors across campus, including English.  These skills include close analytic reading and critical writing, as well as methods for understanding the texts we will study in their formal, historical, and cultural dimensions.

Required Texts will include: Selections from Hartley’s Theory of the Human Mind, on the Principle of Association of Ideas (1775); J. Webb: “An Essay on the Influence of Poetry on the Mind” (1839); selections from Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Alfred Lord Tennyson; Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Sigmund Freud: Selections from The Interpretation of Dreams (1900); “Creative Writers and Daydreaming” (1907); Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway (1925); Ken Kesey: One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962); Noam Chomsky: “A Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior” (1959); B. F. Skinner: Walden Two (1948); Richard Powers: Galatea 2.2 (1995)

Readings will be available in a course packet or electronically; the novels are available for purchase through the UT Co-Op, or another vender of your choosing.

Requirements & Grading: Three 2-3 page close reading essays (45%): you will be given an option to revise two of these essays for a better grade. OED Presentation on a Key Word (10%); Attend related lecture on campus and provide 1-page notes (5%); Peer-Review activities (10%); 7-8 page research paper, due at end of the semester (30%): you will write two drafts of this final paper and will receive comments for revision from the instructor.

Instructor:  Foley, M.            Areas:  n/a

Unique #:  34605            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  Yes

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: This course will introduce students to a selection of twentieth and twenty-first century readings that speculate about how governments would react in the face of disaster--economic, nuclear, and the like--in order to examine the relationship between fiction and participatory democracy at the time of each work's publication. Furthermore, the three interrelated course units--government and economic systems; government and human reproduction; and government and terrorism--will explore how each literary work is read in today's context, and how current political parties use literary works to suit their agendas.

For example, we will consider the following questions: Why was Animal Farm an unsuccessful critique of communism at the time of its publication? How does Atlas Shrugged work as a reaction again Russian communism and as a manifesto for tea party libertarianism? Similarly, what's the relationship between V for Vendetta, 1980's conservatism, and Occupy Wall Street? In sum: How do these works comment upon government, and how then do politicians comment upon literature and revise that literature's meaning?

This course is intended for students interested in learning more about the topic while also cultivating their skills as college-level critical readers and writers.  Hence, although it serves as an introduction to the English major, students of all majors are welcome. In order to enhance our understanding of formal, cultural, and historical dimensions of texts, we will pair each literary work with brief reading about its political roots. Students will also be trained in conducting independent library and web-based research to better understand works of literature, and they will write and revise critical essays drawing on their research and analytic skills.

Required Texts: Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale; Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay. The Federalist: The Essential Essays. Ed. Jack N. Rakove; James, P.D. The Children of Men; Moore, Alan and David Lloyd. V for Vendetta; Orwell, George. Animal Farm; Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. (excerpts); Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; Course packet with secondary readings.

Requirements & Grading: Reading quizzes, 15%; Weekly blog posts commenting on reading, 25%; Critical Essay 1 (4-6 pp.), 10%; Critical Essay 1 revision, 10%; Critical Essay 2 (4-6 pp.), 15%; Final Research Paper (6-8 pp.), 25%.

Instructor:  Gantz, L            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34615            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: “The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.” –Walt Whitman

“An idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.”—Oscar Wilde

What makes a text “dangerous” or “dirty”? Who gets to police the written word? How do we balance the desire to protect specific individuals or groups with the democratic ideal of the free expression of ideas? In this course, we will attempt to answer such questions by drawing upon a variety of literary works that have at various points in history been deemed dangerous or obscene, as well as works that discuss censorship and its ramifications. We will engage in careful reading and analysis of plays, poems, and novels, focusing both on their artistic merits and on the historical and cultural contexts that led to their censorship.

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the study of literature at a college level. To that end, our readings and written assignments will focus on three goals central to preparing for the English major:

1. Students will learn about and practice close reading of literary texts.
2. Students will develop a broad-based vocabulary of useful literary and critical terms and will learn how to use apply those terms to arguments about literature.

      3.   Students will practice researching literary history and criticism of texts, and learn to incorporate their research into written analyses of literature.

Possible texts include: Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman; Love, Anger, Madness by Marie Chauvet; Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas; Woman at Point Zero by Nawal el Saadawi; selections from Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie; Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All for You by Christopher Durang; course packet with secondary readings.

Requirements & Grading: Grading: 30%: 3 critical essays (2-4 page); 30%: 1 research paper and revision (5-8 page); 20%: Reading journal and quizzes; 20%: Presentations, regular participation and attendance; Mandatory peer review.

Instructor:  Perez, L            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34625            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: The texts we will study in this course have all been challenged or banned by American schools within the past 50 years. These books, already considered dangerous due to their subject matter, are rendered even more controversial due to the presence of child characters and narrators. In this course, we will be investigating how authors use the figure of the child to complicate and highlight their stories of societal violence, governmental tyranny, and racial prejudice. Why did Mark Twain and Harper Lee both choose child narrators to relate their stories of racial violence and hatred? Why do the dystopian visions of Lois Lowry and Suzanne Collins focus on the endangerment and abuse of children? Why do Robert Cormier and William Golding use groups of boys to reveal the hidden dangers in supposedly civilized society? By examining these texts, we will explore how authors both utilize and subvert the idea of childhood as a time of innocence in order to explore larger social issues, and why some readers have found these texts threatening enough to attempt to ban them.

This course will combine close reading of primary sources with the study of secondary critical essays to help students understand the formal, cultural, and historical contexts of each of these books and why they have been (and continue to be) challenged and banned. Students will also develop the skills essential to literary study by writing and revising several critical essays and by learning to use library databases, including the online Oxford English Dictionary.

Possible Texts include: Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Golding, William. Lord of the Flies; Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird; Cormier, Robert. The Chocolate War; Lowry, Lois. The Giver; Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games.

Requirements & Grading: Two short critical essays with revisions (2-3 pgs.): 50%; One longer final essay (6-7 pgs.): 25%; Two Short Assignments (1-2 pgs. each): 10%; Reading responses and quizzes:  15%.

Instructor:  Jewell, B            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34630            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: In this course, we will try to discover how and why literary representations of violence, sex and desire can sometimes be so threatening – so powerful – that they provoke people to stamp them out of existence. Understanding both the socio-historical contexts that produce such controversial texts and the cultures that demand they be censored will position us to see tensions and connections between morals, desires, and creative expression. In what ways might moralism or the definition of a limit, a too-far-ness, be an expression of the same desires it seeks to snuff out? Though our analysis will necessarily draw on material beyond the texts in question, our primary endeavors in this class will be to cultivate close reading skills, and to develop arguments based on sustained engagements with our texts.

This course helps students prepare for upper-division classes in English and other majors by focusing on close reading and critical writing, and by introducing formal, historical, and cultural approaches to literary texts. Students will learn how to use the online Oxford English Dictionary as well as other resources essential to literary study.

Possible texts include: Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov; The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare; I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou; Beloved, Toni Morrison; Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller; and, selections from Marquis de Sade and Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.

Requirements & Grading: Two 4-pg. essays: 30%; One revision: 15%; One 6-pg. essay: 25%; Short papers and Informal Writing assignments: 20%; Attendance and Participation: 10%.

Instructor:  Herbly, H            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34635            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  Yes

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: This course will examine books that have been banned or otherwise challenged in Britain and the United States. Beginning with John Milton’s Areopagitica, an essay that, one might argue, provides the foundation for modern notions of free speech and censorship, we will examine how challenged books interrogate our notions of decency and morality. The course will end with Beloved, a book that forces us to question how we understand our nation’s traumatic past. Each of these books will allow us to discuss how literature as an art can also profoundly disturb us. To facilitate discussion this class will examine works at the levels of language, context, and textual history.

This course helps students prepare for upper-division English classes (as well as a wide range of upper-division courses in other UT programs and departments) by focusing on close reading and critical writing, and by introducing formal, historical, and cultural approaches to literary texts. Students will learn how to use the online Oxford English Dictionary as well as other resources essential to literary study.

Course Website: http://instructors.cwrl.utexas.edu/herbly/

Texts: Possible texts include: John Milton, Areopagitica; selections from Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man; Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles; Oscar Wilde, Salome; James Baldwin, Maurice; Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale; Toni Morrison, Beloved.

Requirements & Grading: Final Paper: 30%; Midterm paper (2 drafts): 30%; OED/Close reading assignments (2): 30%; Discussion questions/blog posts (1): 10%.

Instructor:  Ariza-Barile, R.            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34645            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: This course surveys a number of texts that have in some way challenged authority or otherwise made people in power uncomfortable because of their content. Students will discuss a variety of topics including, but not limited to, religion, sex, gender, dysfunctional societies, politics, terrorism, scatology, and violence. Why have certain literary works been rejected? Salman Rushdie, for example, has repeatedly received death threats since the 1988 publication of The Satanic Verses. In the past, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales have been edited for their “dirty” content, and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange has been said to incite teenage violence (particularly after the 1971 film version). This course will aim for productive dialogue about these controversial texts while also fostering critical skills that are instrumental to the study of literature.

This course will help you prepare for upper-division English classes, but also for classes in any other discipline in which critical thinking, reading, and writing skills are important. During the term, you will engage in a variety of close reading and writing exercises and become familiar with several research methods (Oxford English Dictionary, journals, library databases, etc.). Because E314L carries a writing flag, you should expect writing assignments to comprise a significant portion of your grade.

Possible texts include: Geoffrey Chaucer, The Miller’s Tale; The Wife of Bath’s Tale (from the Canterbury Tales); Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange; Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses.

Requirements & Grading (out of 100 points): For every reading, you will produce a brief reflective essay, as well as a paper that demonstrates close reading skills. At the end of the semester, you will be asked to produce a full-length research essay on your favorite work.

3 mini-papers (3 pages), 10 points each (30 points total); 3 close reading exercises (2 pages), 10 points each (30 points total); 1 final research paper (8-10 pages), 40 points.

Final grades will be expressed in letters considering the following rubric:  A = 95-100; A- = 90-94; B+ = 87-89; B = 84-86; B = 80-83; C+ = 77-79; C = 74-76; C- = 70-73; D+ 67-69; D = 64-66; D- = 60-63; F = 0-60.

Instructor:  Varelmann, M.            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34648            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  Yes

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: We often turn to works of literature to show us new ways of viewing ourselves and our world. But when do these visions or perspectives become threatening rather than simply entertaining or thought provoking? In this course, we will examine these questions through works that challenge social, political, and cultural powers and thereby impact our realities in tangible ways. Our focus will be on works that foreground alternative visions of place, the future, and acceptable modes of behavior.

This course will emphasize the skills of close reading, library research, and critical writing that engages formal, cultural, and historical criticism of literary texts. It will provide excellent preparation for upper-division courses in English but also for courses in any other academic discipline that values skills in reading, writing, critical thinking, and research. Students from all majors are welcome.

Texts: Readings may include Howl by Allen Ginsberg, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, and Beloved by Toni Morrison.

There will also be a course packet with additional readings and critical essays. These may include selections from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kate Chopin, Flannery O’Connor, and Joy Williams, and George Orwell.

Requirements & Grading: Assignments may include short critical essays (2-4 pages) with opportunity for revision, reading responses/blog posts, final research paper (6-8 pages) or multimedia project.

100% of your grade in this course will be determined by use of the Learning Record, which requires each student to compile a portfolio of work at the midterm and at the end of the semester, plus an analysis of individual work development.

Instructor:  Roberts, M            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34650            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  Yes

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: In this course we will examine books that have been banned in England and America for "graphic" or "explicit" content. What has offended in these texts is (supposedly) not distasteful political or religious sensibilities, but instead a depiction of that which "should not be shown": usually sex, violence, or depravity. This sort of literature raises interesting questions about the role of disgust (or horror) in literature. Are there acts, events, or cultures that should not be shown? Is disgust purely a negative reaction, or might it yield positive results? Is explicit material worth defending for its own sake (see, for example, the recent controversy over The Human Centipede 2 in Britain), or must it be serving some other artistic, political, or religious purpose? Does what an era finds disgusting reveal something about the culture's changing sensibilities? Charting violent, sexual, and gory literature from the sixteenth century to today, we will examine both the thematic uses of explicit literature as well as reactions to it. In doing so, we will discuss the disgusting, the horrific, and the graphic as both a literary motif and a point of tension within a culture.

This course will combine close reading of primary sources with the study of secondary critical essays in order to understand how the historical and cultural contexts surrounding these works (and the controversies they sparked) relate to their formal characteristics as literary artifacts. In the process, students will also learn how to use library databases including such as the online Oxford English Dictionary as well as other resources essential to literary study.

Disclaimer: In case the above description is not clear, we will be encountering lots of explicit and potentially offensive material in this class. If you are squeamish or easily disgusted, this may not be the course for you.

Tentative reading list: John Ford, Tis Pity She's a Whore; Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal; Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer; Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted Bird.

Poetry and short fiction by: Earl of Rochester, Percy Shelley, Christina Rossetti, Charles Baudelaire, Isidore Ducasse, Edgar Allen Poe.

Brief selections from: John Foxe, The Book of Martyrs; Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene; Matthew Lewis, The Monk; Marquis de Sade, Justine; James Joyce, Ulysses; William S Burroughs, Naked Lunch.

Requirements & Grading: 30%: Three short (2 pp.) close reading essays; 20%: Contextual Analysis essay; 10%: Contextual Analysis revision; 20%: Cultural Analysis essay; 15%: Presentation on modern horror; 5%: Text and author introduction.

Instructor:  Gray, N            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34655            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description:

“Books won't stay banned.  They won't burn.  Ideas won't go to jail.

In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost.

The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.”

 ~Alfred Whitney Griswold, New York Times, 24 February 1959

Most books fall into obscurity when they’re published. A few, often assigned reading in English courses, rise to fame. But what about the negative responses to book publication over the course of history, which have ranged from burning, to banning, to legal action, violence, and even murder? A whole section of the American Library Association’s website is dedicated to monitoring and publishing book bans across the U.S. Efforts to ban books from school districts, libraries, and bookstores have resulted in legal battles on state and national levels. Citing reasons from obscenity, to political bias, to racial and religious offensiveness, individuals and groups have lobbied to keep books off library shelves and out of the literary marketplace. What is it that can be so threatening about a book? Who challenges books, and who or what are these challenges designed to protect? In this course, we will concentrate on three complex literary works that have been challenged in the United States, considering them in terms of their formal and material characteristics and in the context of how arguments for and against them fit into the long history of American censorship debates.

This course helps students prepare for upper-division classes in English and other disciplines by focusing on close reading and critical writing. It will also introduce formal, historical, and cultural approaches to literary texts. Students will learn how to use the online Oxford English Dictionary as well as other resources essential to literary study.

Texts: William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying; Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems; Toni Morrison, Beloved.

Selections from: John Milton, Areopagitica; Thomas Paine, Rights of Man; Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (with the Comstock Act, under which it was banned); Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass; D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover; Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn; Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451.

Requirements & Grading: Three critical essays (2-3 pages): 30%; one (5-6 page) research paper with optional revision: 25%; short assignments, blog posts, and informal writing assignments: 20%; quizzes and classroom participation: 25%.

Instructor:  Gulesserian, L            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34656            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  Yes

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: Cultural productions have been banned and censored for a number of reasons, some expected—profanity, lewdness, vulgarity, sacrilege—and some surprising—retelling the past. This course will attend to books, graphic novels, short stories, and films that have caused public controversy because of their unique representations of historical events. Whether nostalgically revisiting “the good old days,” vehemently criticizing “the dark ages,” or merely telling a story that “is not a story to pass on,” many from England, India, South Africa, Iran, Antigua, Lebanon, and America have been banned, censored, or criticized for their historical imaginings. Through close reading and critical writing using formal, historical, and cultural approaches to literature, we will work to uncover some versions of the past that have gotten a few authors in trouble. The Oxford English Dictionary and other resources essential to literary study will aid us in this endeavor and will also help prepare you for upper-division courses in various disciplines. The stakes are high when representing difficult, forgotten, or unwanted stories from the past—in this course, we will examine why reimagining the past in cultural productions around the globe was, and continues to be, so fraught.

Texts: Fictional works may include Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688), Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter (1979), Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987), Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1988), Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place (1988), Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (2000), and Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir (2008). Critical works may include Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past (1997).

Requirements & Grading: One group presentation on recent scholarship of an assigned reading; three short critical essays (2-4 pages each); one research paper (5-8 pages); regular blog posts related to the readings in our course, and the Learning Record midterm and final evaluations. Revision is mandatory for the research paper and two of the three short critical essays. Participation in classroom discussion is also a requirement.

Grades in this course are determined on the basis of the Learning Record, which accompanies a portfolio of work presented at the midterm and at the end of the course. These portfolios present a selection of student work, both formal and informal, completed during the semester; ongoing observations about student learning; and midterm and final evaluations of the student’s development across five dimensions of learning: confidence and independence, knowledge and understanding, skills and strategies, use of prior and emerging experience, and reflectiveness. This development is centered around the major strands of work in the course: reading, writing process, presentation, digital literacy, and collaboration. At the midterm and the final, students will evaluate their performance in the course and argue for the grade they deserve. Final grades will be based on how well students demonstrate and provide evidence for development in their written grade evaluations.

Instructor:  Garbacz, R.            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34660            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: From Virgil’s government-funded epic (The Aeneid, 29-19 BC) to Toni Morrison’s analysis of slavery’s role in America’s roots (A Mercy, 2008 AD), stories have gained power by portraying national origins and national mindsets. Such works often take political stances, thrilling to the glories of conquest or protesting the destruction and pain caused by aggression. In fact, stories often accomplish both tasks at once, inviting later readers to discover tragedy and sorrow within a seemingly warlike text or fascist tendencies in a protest piece. In this course, students will explore the way that such nationally-oriented texts deal with their contemporary world—and the ways in which later authors and thinkers rework old stories to create new arguments for their own times.

While this course deals with the weighty themes, it is designed as an introduction to students just beginning their encounters with college-level literary criticism. This course helps students prepare for upper-division English classes, as well as a wide range of upper-division courses in other UT programs and departments, by focusing on close reading and critical writing, and by introducing formal, historical, and cultural approaches to literary texts. Students will learn how to use the online Oxford English Dictionary, how to find and read academic articles, how to engage with unfamiliar dialects of English, and other foundational skills of literary analysis. Thus students will gain understanding of a wide array of methods for understanding the ways texts make meaning--both in their historical context, and beyond it.

Required Texts: Williams, David R. Sin Boldly: Dr. Dave's Guide to Writing the College Paper. Cambridge: Perseus Publishing. 2nd ed. recommended; Virgil Aeneid, Tr. Stanley Lombardo. Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing; Anon. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a Norton Critical Edition. Tr. Marie Boroff, Ed. Borroff & Howes. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010; Conrad, Joseph Lord Jim: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Thomas C. Moser. New York: W.W. Norton & Company; Morrison, Toni. A Mercy. New York: Vintage, 2009; various secondary readings to be provided in a course packet.

Alternate: Virgil, Robert Fagles (tr.) The Aeneid. New York: Penguin Books.

Requirements & Grading: Pop Quizzes and short assignments (in-class or out-of-class), 10%; Paper Proposals (three polished 2-3-page paper proposals based on class reading and outside research), 30%; Major Essay (one 4-7-page essay demonstrating both close reading and intelligent application of outside research), 60%.

Instructor:  Alyea, T            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34665            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: Whether we are aware of it or not, we are always reading in context. Anyone who has sifted through a set of dictionary entries to figure out the precise meaning of a single word in a novel or poem can recognize that our understanding of words, and consequently, the books that carry them, depends greatly on the circumstances in which they are used. We are frequently warned not to judge a book by its cover, but we nonetheless check the cover to see who wrote it, when it was written, where. And just as it can be hard to imagine how we might have "sweet" without "sour," or happiness without sadness, we cannot say that a book “stands the test of time” without comparing it to a book that does not.

This semester, then, we will build upon a base of skills that we use all the time but rarely reflect upon. Like most courses in literary studies, the core focus of this class will be the development of skills necessary for close reading and critical writing about texts--tasks which necessarily rely on recognizing how context organizes textual meaning. We will discuss the contextual aspects of textual study in a variety of ways. For example, as we look at a variety of short stories, poems, novels, and a play, we will examine how the formal qualities of each genre shape our understanding of texts and enable us to draw comparisons between disparate works. Additionally, we will examine how the texts emerge from and respond to significant historical events and cultural struggles. As we do so, we will develop skills for literary and historical research by reading literary criticism, using the Oxford English Dictionary, and scouring library databases.

Along with working on skills needed for success in upper-division English classes, we will find our readings of the text enriched by engaging textual criticism offered by professional critics and your peers. For, aside from the fact that others can spot aspects of a text that we don't notice at first, they can also provoke us to take a closer look at the text by offering interpretations that we agree or disagree with. By building a healthy conversational ethic in the classroom and on the class discussion board, we will develop deliberative skills that shall be applicable to all fields of study.

Texts may include: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus; Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym; Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye and selections from Playing in the Dark; Nathanael West, A Cool Million; Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress.

Requirements & Grading: 3 short writing assignments (2 pages) 20%; 1 Mid-term essay (3-4) 20%; 1 Final essay, (6-8 pp) with annotated bibliography) 25%; Discussion Board Posts 15%; Special Topics Discussion Post (2pgs) and Presentation 10%; Participation, Reading Quizzes 10%.

Instructor:  Alyea, T            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34670            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: Whether we are aware of it or not, we are always reading in context. Anyone who has sifted through a set of dictionary entries to figure out the precise meaning of a single word in a novel or poem can recognize that our understanding of words, and consequently, the books that carry them, depends greatly on the circumstances in which they are used. We are frequently warned not to judge a book by its cover, but we nonetheless check the cover to see who wrote it, when it was written, where. And just as it can be hard to imagine how we might have "sweet" without "sour," or happiness without sadness, we cannot say that a book “stands the test of time” without comparing it to a book that does not.

This semester, then, we will build upon a base of skills that we use all the time but rarely reflect upon. Like most courses in literary studies, the core focus of this class will be the development of skills necessary for close reading and critical writing about texts--tasks which necessarily rely on recognizing how context organizes textual meaning. We will discuss the contextual aspects of textual study in a variety of ways. For example, as we look at a variety of short stories, poems, novels, and a play, we will examine how the formal qualities of each genre shape our understanding of texts and enable us to draw comparisons between disparate works. Additionally, we will examine how the texts emerge from and respond to significant historical events and cultural struggles. As we do so, we will develop skills for literary and historical research by reading literary criticism, using the Oxford English Dictionary, and scouring library databases.

Along with working on skills needed for success in upper-division English classes, we will find our readings of the text enriched by engaging textual criticism offered by professional critics and your peers. For, aside from the fact that others can spot aspects of a text that we don't notice at first, they can also provoke us to take a closer look at the text by offering interpretations that we agree or disagree with. By building a healthy conversational ethic in the classroom and on the class discussion board, we will develop deliberative skills that shall be applicable to all fields of study.

Texts may include: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus; Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym; Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye and selections from Playing in the Dark; Nathanael West, A Cool Million; Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress.

Requirements & Grading: 3 short writing assignments (2 pages) 20%; 1 Mid-term essay (3-4) 20%; 1 Final essay, (6-8 pp) with annotated bibliography) 25%; Discussion Board Posts 15%; Special Topics Discussion Post (2pgs) and Presentation 10%; Participation, Reading Quizzes 10%.

Instructor:  Birkholz, D            Areas:  n/a

Unique #:  34680            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  English Honors, Plan I Honors

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: This course is designed to prepare students for the English major. We will read, discuss, and write about a collection of texts in several complementary ways: we will consider the text of each work, its literary and historical contexts, and the cultural contests in which it has participated.

When we consider the text of each work, we will examine stylistic and aesthetic elements (e.g., the author's use of character, setting, imagery, language patterns, and even sentence syntax) and how those elements contribute to the work's broader themes and apparent purposes.

In considering each work's relationship to its literary and historical context, we will read a number of historical documents as well as shorter literary works from the period in which the work was written. Some questions we'll ask: what kinds of historical knowledge does the work assume its reader to have? How was the work in question been shaped by—and how did it shape—historically specific events, issues, and literary trends?

Finally, we will consider how each of the central works has fared since its publication—that is, how it has been valued and devalued in various cultural "contests." For whom has it been especially important? When has it been considered "great literature"? By what criteria has it been judged since its first publication? Does the work have any social, intellectual, or aesthetic value at present?

Texts: The Song of Songs; Sappho, Poems and Fragments; Shakespeare, Twelfth Night; Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer; Wycherley, The Country Wife; Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest; Conan Doyle, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; Kipling, Kim; Achebe, Things Fall Apart; Reed, Mumbo Jumbo; Course Packet (selections from Sedgwick, Frye, Eagleton, Bahktin, Said, etc.).

Requirements & Grading: Assignment specifics to be distributed & discussed; percentages approximate and subject to change.

Three 5-7+ pp. papers (plus required drafts for first two; required 1-page prospectus for all three), 25% each; In-Class Performance (writing, discussion, engagement, preparation, peer feedback), 25%; Attendance (repeated absences will affect grade), Required; On-time Completion of Reading & Writing Assignments, Required.

Please Note: All assignments must be completed satisfactorily in order for you to receive any passing grade for the course.

Instructor:  Jacks, R            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34690            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: When asked about poetry, A.E. Housman said that he could “no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat,” though “we both recognised the object by the symptoms which it provoked in us.” These symptoms— the particular visceral responses produced by meter, alliteration, consonance, assonance, and other formal features—are what separate poetry from other forms of text and will be the focus of this course. Students will develop skills in poetic analysis by examining a wide variety of poems ranging five centuries. We will also explore the strengths and limitations of a formal approach by considering the historical and cultural contexts embedded in each poem. Above all, our principal tasks will be centered in close reading and effective argumentation.

This course is intended for students interested in learning more about poetry while also cultivating their skills as college-level critical readers and writers. Hence, although it serves as an introduction to the English major, students of all majors are welcome.

Texts: The Broadview Anthology of Poetry; Williams, Joseph M. Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace. 3rd Edition.

Readings include selections from John Donne, Anne Finch, Alexander Pope, William Cowper, Robert Burns, William Wordsworth, Byron, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Gerald Manley Hopkins, and Wallace Stevens.

***All other texts will be available in PDF form for printout via the class website.***

Requirements & Grading: Two Short Assignments (2 pages each) 20%; Reflections and Participation 25%; Poetry Vocabulary Exam 15%; Annotated Bibliography (2 pages) 10%; Research Paper (8 pages) 30%.

Instructor:  Ptacek, J            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34691            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  Yes

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: What’s so special about poetry?  What makes it so popular throughout history? Why do figures as different as Percy Bysshe Shelley and Geoffrey Hill, Aristotle and Heidegger, John Stuart Mill and T. S. Eliot—even Bob Dylan and Morrissey—care so much about it? Why has it always been central to the practice of literary criticism? What does it mean to write a poem, to read one, or even, as Mary Poovey suggested, to live inside one? And what is a poem anyway? Is it a matter of form, or function, or technique?

In order to begin answering these questions, we will investigate a wide range of lyric poets and poetry—including, for example, Sappho, nursery rhymes, and Shakespeare; John Donne, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Christina Rossetti, William Butler Yeats, and the Smiths—with an eye to both the similarities and differences in their poetical practices. Each of these poets returns again and again to the lyric form to express their fears about war, their anxieties about sex, or their relationship to nature and to cities, trying all the while to make sense of the world around them.

No prior knowledge of poetry or critical theory is required. As we progress, we’ll develop as a class a set of critical and formal vocabularies to help us make sense of the poetry. We will focus on developing literary analysis and research skills, and to that end we will read both classic and modern pieces of criticism in order to give us conceptual models for our own academic work. We’ll also work on honing our research and writing skills, and use the Oxford English Dictionary to help us grasp of how historical changes in the English language affect poetry and our understanding of it. These skills will prove useful not only to English majors, but to students of many disciplines.

Throughout the semester our work will be heavily collaborative. Students should expect to write three formal, peer-reviewed papers, ranging from 2-7 pages, as well as weekly informal writing assignments of one to two pages to be shared with the class. Students should also expect to engage in thought-provoking discussions about these fascinating poetic works.

Probable texts include: John Donne, Songs and Sonnets (circa 1600-1630); Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads (1798); Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862); William Butler Yeats, The Tower (1928) OR The Winding Stair (1929); a course packet and / or in-class handouts will also be supplied.

Requirements & Grading: Three 2-6-page papers: 60%; short papers and informal writing assignments: 30%; attendance and class participation: 10%.

Instructor:  Wise, R            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34695            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  Yes

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: In her 1898 Women and Economics, Charlotte Perkins Gilman insisted, “There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.” Yet this course focuses on reading women writers. In order to explore why an author’s sex might be relevant to the study of literature, we will consider some key questions throughout our discussions: How have different historical periods and generations affected women’s writing? How do social and cultural factors shape our understanding of gender? What literary forms have women utilized at given historical moments? And how do issues of nationality, race, sexuality, region, and class influence these questions of authorship?

Although not intended as a survey, “Reading Women Writers” will cover a variety of texts from the 19th and 20th centuries. This course helps students prepare for upper-division classes in English and other disciplines by focusing on close reading and critical writing, and by introducing formal, historical, and cultural approaches to literary texts. Students will learn how to use the online Oxford English Dictionary as well as other resources essential to literary study. Because revision is an essential part of the writing process, students will have the opportunity to revise and resubmit three short papers.

Possible Texts: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, selections from Sui Sin Far’s Mrs. Spring Fragrance, Nella Larsen’s Quicksand, Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, and Sharon Bridgeforth’s Love Conjure/Blues. These texts will be supplemented by additional literary, historical, and theoretical readings available on Blackboard.

Requirements & Grading: Three short papers (2-3 pages)—30%; Annotated bibliography—15%; Peer review of final paper—5%; Final research paper (5-7 pages)—25%; Presentation—10%; Assorted exercises and reflections—15%.

Instructor:  McGinnis, E            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34700            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  possibly

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: In her 1971 essay/manifesto “What Can a Heroine Do? or Why Women Can’t Write,” science-fiction writer Joanna Rusk asks, "What myths, what plots, what actions are available to a female protagonist?" Frustrated with the limited cultural narratives available to her, which cast female characters as either “love interests” or “Bitch Goddesses,” Russ finds new possibilities at the boundaries of genre fiction.

In this course, we will look at the multiple ways in which American women writers and poets have responded to this challenge. How do they negotiate gender assumptions and genre conventions while also testing out novel approaches to writing and representing women? How might they assert authority in relation not only to patriarchal literary models but also to medical and scientific discourses that seek to define womanhood? And how do issues of nationality, race, and class influence these questions of female authorship and authority?

Although not intended as a survey, “Reading Women Writers” will cover a variety of texts from the 19th and 20th centuries while introducing students to the foundations of the English major. Students will practice close reading, critical writing, and research and become familiar with a range of critical approaches.

Possible Texts: Elaine Showalter’s The Vintage Book of American Women Writers, Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, and Toni Morrison’s Sula. These texts will be supplemented by additional literary and theoretical readings available on Blackboard.

Requirements & Grading: Three (1-page) reading responses: 15%; one (3-4-page) close reading with optional revision: 15%; one (5-6-page) research paper with optional revision: 25%; a multimedia poetry project: 10%; homework grade (regular posts to a course blog): 10%; final exam: 25%.

Instructor:  Orem, S            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34710            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  Yes

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: Performance and Entertainment in Twentieth Century America --

From blues singers in the 1920s to Broadway actresses in the 2000s, women have used popular performance genres in order to become authors and think about their actions in the world. Though popular artistic genres are often deemed lowbrow or unsophisticated, many women have successfully appropriated popular, commercial performance styles in order to leverage critiques against dominant conceptions of femininity. The notion of performance for “entertainment” has a shifting relationship with the literary canon: while the works of some dramatic authors are readily accepted as serious literature, such as Shakespeare or Tom Stoppard, others are simply seen as trite or commercial.

This class hopes to examine the canon of women’s literature by reading broadly across a variety of performance genres, including theater, performance art, film, television, and music. While considering these texts, we will ask several questions: What constitutes performance? How do popular performance genres allow minority subjects to re-appropriate or re-work dominant cultural forms? And, how does embodied performance allow us to understand questions of race, gender, or sexuality?

Possible Texts: Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls (film and choreopoem); Alice Walker, The Color Purple (film, novel, and musical); Lillian Hellman, The Children’s Hour (playscript and film); The Five Lesbian Brothers, Brave Smiles…Another Lesbian Tragedy and The Secretaries; Music by Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith; Carmelita Tropicana, I, Carmelita Tropicana; The Oprah Winfrey Show; stand-up by Roseanne Barr and Margaret Cho; Selena (film); critical writings by bell hooks and Judith Butler.

Requirements & Grading: Three short papers (2-3 pages) – 20%; Midterm paper (4-6 pages) – 15%; Midterm paper revised and resubmitted (4-6 pages) – 20%; Final research paper (5-7 pages) – 20%; an in-class presentation and short handout – 15%; Attendance and participation – 10%.

Instructor:  King, B            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34730            Flags:  Cultural Diversity, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  AFR 317F            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: African American philosopher Alain Locke characterized the Harlem Renaissance as an artistic pronouncement of black “self-expression and . . . self-determination.” This “flowing” of literature, art, and music during the 1920s and 30s had profound political implications for Locke: “The American Mind must reckon with a fundamentally changed Negro. . . . He now becomes a conscious . . . collaborator and participant in American Civilization.” Following Locke’s linkage of imaginative and political “self-determination,” this course’s primary topics will be artistic, cultural, and political declarations of independence in African American literature, and a variety of reactions that these declarations elicit.

We’ll explore a series of texts that address and interconnect the following two issues: African American political revolt, before and after slavery; demands for artistic “self-determination” (such as Locke’s); and responses to and criticisms of those demands in fiction, poetry, visual art, and music.

This course teach skills that will help you succeed in upper-division courses in English, African and African American Studies, and many other academic disciplines. You will be expected to develop scholarly techniques for reading literary texts and critical essays. You will also practice writing essays of four types: close reading; historical analysis; cultural/political interpretation with an emphasis on issues of race, class, and gender; and critical analysis of literary scholarship. Students will learn how to make use of the online Oxford English Dictionary as well as other resources essential to literary study.

Primary Texts: The Confessions of Nat Turner; Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee; short selections from Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, Langston Hughes Zora Neal Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amiri Baraka, James Baldwin and Audre Lorde; Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neal Hurston; Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison; Jazz, Toni Morrison.

Scholarly Texts: short selections from works by Hortense Spillers, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Cornel West, Houston Baker, and Paul Gilroy.

Requirements & Grading: 3 Short Essays (2-3 pages) that focus on the language or context of a specific passage, two of which will be revised (10% for each one); 1 research paper (6 pages) with at least 4 sources (25%); Revision of the research paper (15%); Reading Quizzes (20%); Participation (10%).

Instructor:  García, P            Areas:  n/a

Unique #:  34750            Flags:  Writing, Cultural Diversity

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  MAS 314            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: This course will consider the relationship between Mexican-American literature and the social conditions of its production, mainly concentrating on novels written between 1967 and the present. Topics will include: literary form and cultural nationalism during the Chicano Renaissance, post-movement critiques of nationalist aesthetics, and the impact of immigration in the shaping of the Mexican-American experience.

Texts: Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa; House on Mango Street and Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros; …y no se lo tragó la tierra/…and the earth did not swallow him by Tomás Rivera; Brownsville by Oscar Casares; Crazy Loco by David Rice

Requirements & Grading: Quizzes 15%; Response Essays 10%; Presentation 15%; Essays (2) 60%.

Instructor:  Rosen, S            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34753            Flags:  Cultural Diversity, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  AFR 317F            Computer Instruction:  Yes

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: In 2010, Dan Savage began a viral video campaign when he and his partner posted a video to YouTube promising a viewing audience of gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual kids that life “gets better.” The project’s uncritical positive attitude has received critique from some queer intellectuals and kids, but it has also inspired videos from prominent LGBT people and allies, and given some viewers suffering from discrimination and heartbreak a sense of community and hope.

Before YouTube, queer people read books. In fact, reading, writing, and critiquing literary works has long been an occupation of queer-identified people. Literature can build community and offer hope, but it can also reflect the complexities of queer lives and relationships, transform transgressive pleasures into art, and analyze the histories and ideologies that often keep things from simply getting better, in spite of Savage’s promise.

In this course, we will examine the specific features of literary works that enable them to do all this, and that have long made them an important part of queer culture. Students will develop skills — close analytic reading and creative critical writing — that will help them succeed in upper-division courses across campus. This class is therefore recommended for English majors and non-majors alike. Readings include canonical and popular literatures, as well as some music, film and new media, and scholarly articles that will inform our approach.

Texts: Readings will include works by Gloria Anzaldúa, Langston Hughes, Frank O’Hara, Sappho, Shakespeare, Eve Sedgwick, Sandy Soto, Michel Foucault, Oscar Wilde. Readings will be provided in a coursepack available for purchase.

Requirements & Grading: Students will write three 2-page papers, revise two of these papers, and write one longer 5-7-page paper. Students will write regularly in an online forum.

Grades in this class will be determined using the Learning Record, a nontraditional, evidence-based system for assessing student progress and achievement.

Instructor:  Eils, C.            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  34755            Flags:  Cultural Diversity, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  AMS 315F            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: Cherokee author Thomas King writes, “The truth about stories is that that’s all we are.” In this course, we will read a selection of stories – nonfiction, short stories, poems, and novels – written by contemporary Native American authors. As a class, we will consider the questions these texts ask about stories and their real world consequences. For instance, how can stories nourish individuals and communities? How can they act as prisons? How can a story be dangerous? Most important, how can stories produce social, economic, and political changes in today’s world? We will approach our course texts from political, cultural, historical, and formal perspectives while also paying particular attention to their specific tribal contexts.

This discussion-driven course has been designed with both English majors and non-English majors in mind. The critical writing and analytical reading skills we will develop will help students succeed in upper-division courses in many majors across campus, including English.

Tentative texts include Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony; Thomas King, The Truth About Stories and Green Grass, Running Water; David Treuer, The Translation of Dr. Apelles; Sherman Alexie, Flight; and selected short stories, poems, and critical texts available in a course reader including work by LeAnne Howe, Joy Harjo, Gloria Bird, Paula Gunn Allen, and Simon Ortiz, among others.

Requirements & Grading: short critical responses (20%); in-class reading responses and participation (10%); two 3-4-page critical essays (20% each); final 5-7-page essay (30%). Students will have the opportunity to revise major writing assignments based on instructor feedback.

Instructor:  Casares, O & Moore, L            Areas:  n/a

Unique #:  34760-34790            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  n/a

E 315F and 318L (Topic 1: Fiction) may not both be counted.

E 315P and 318L (Topic 2: Poetry) may not both be counted.

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: This course is an introduction to the three major genres of creative writing: fiction, poetry, and the personal essay. Students will be evaluated on work in all three genres. Short, frequent writing assignments (blog posts, sketches, and single poems) will allow students to practice their craft throughout the semester, and will culminate in longer pieces in each genre.

Prof. Casares will teach an introduction to reading and writing literary fiction. During the semester we will study a variety of stories from the textbooks, looking at the different techniques the writer used, and then eventually discussing your own short stories in this same manner. The goal is to make you a more critical reader while you gain a greater appreciation for what goes into developing an effective story, all of which is designed to improve your writing skills. Note: We will be discussing only literary fiction and not genre fiction (science fiction, vampire stories, romance, suspense, etc.). Prof. Casares will spend time at the beginning of the semester explaining the differences between the two forms, but if you hoped to write genre fiction this may not be the right course for you. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Prof. Moore will teach poetry writing, focusing on the building blocks of poetic craft (line, sound, and stanza) as well as broader issues of voice, tone, diction, and subject matter. We will read and analyze a variety of classic and contemporary poems, seeking to become better readers in order to become better writers.

Profs. Casares and Moore will collaborate to teach the art of the personal essay. Different from the persuasive or analytic essay you write for other classes, the personal essay is a literary genre related to memoir and autobiography. We will read outstanding examples of the form and practice casting our own experiences as literature in essays of our own.

This course will also introduce students to the basic practice of the creative writing class, the workshop. Every student will have the opportunity to have at least one assignment workshopped, either by the T.A. and members of your section, or by the professor and your T.A. in front of the whole class. Students will be able to choose between these options. 

Texts: Janet Burroway, Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft, Pearson/Longman (3rd edition)

Requirements & Grading: Short story:  20% of final grade

Suite of 3-5 poems:  20% of final grade

Personal essay:  20% of final grade

Character sketch:  5% of final grade

Plot sketch:  5% of final grade

Poem #1:  5% of final grade

Poem #2:  5% of final grade

Personal Essay proposal:  5% of final grade

Weekly blog posts: 10% of final grade

Participation and attendance:  5% of final grade

Instructor:  Murphy, G            Areas:  n/a

Unique #:  34845-34890            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Completion of at least thirty semester hours of coursework, including E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: Literature in History--

A survey of United States literature from the colonial period to the present.

Texts: Classic American Autobiography, ed. William L. Andrews

Masterworks of American Literature, course reader

The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien

Requirements & Grading: Close Reading Exercises, 60%; Quizzes, 30%; Attendance and participation, 10%.

Instructor:  Barrish, P            Areas:  -- / B

Unique #:  34895-34940            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Completion of at least thirty semester hours of coursework, including E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: Literature in History --

This course surveys nearly four hundred years of American literature. We will concentrate on relating the diverse "voices" of American literature to one another and to the social and historical contexts appropriate to each, as well as on questions of literary form.

Texts: Course packet and selected novels. Students who do not already own clickers will be required to purchase them.

Requirements & Grading: Quizzes and brief, informal writing assignments in which you respond to what you have read; Participation and other in-class activities; One midterm and one final examination; Punctual attendance at all class meetings, including discussion sections.

Instructor:  Berry, B            Areas:  n/a

Unique #:  34945-34990            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Completion of at least thirty semester hours of coursework, including E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: Literature in History--

Because this course covers the broad range of American literature, nearly four centuries of writing, it will necessarily involve a rich variety of nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and drama. We will begin by examining the origins of American literature from its colonial beginnings in New England in the 17th century through the Enlightenment of the 18th century and the particular brand of Romanticism that marked the early 19th century. Then we will focus on a myriad of American voices of the late 19th and 20th centuries, noting, as we proceed, both continuities and innovations. We will be particularly interested in women and minority writers, and certain longer texts—by Crane, Plath, O’Brien, and McCarthy—will provide special opportunities to study the relationship between a particular work and the history and culture in which it is grounded. Throughout we will seek to define and elucidate a genuine national literature that is powerful, multicultural, and inclusive. There is a fair amount of reading to be done in this class, but the rewards in seeking to understand America’s past and present are immense.

Texts: McMichael, ed., Concise Anthology of American Literature, 6th ed.; Stephen Crane, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets, and Other New York Writings; Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman; Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar; Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods; Cormac McCarthy, The Road.

Requirements & Grading: Quizzes & Disc. Section Participation, 15%; First Exam, 25%; Second Exam, 30%; Final Exam, 30%.

Punctual attendance for all class meetings  [See Course Policy Statement]

Discussion Sessions with your respective TAs are mandatory. TA sessions may frequently include 10-20 question quizzes.

Instructor:  Perez, D            Areas:  -- / B

Unique #:  34995-35040            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Completion of at least thirty semester hours of coursework, including E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: Literature, Culture, and Identity--

This course is a historically arranged survey of American literature that includes voices and perspectives spanning the 17th through the 21st centuries. Novels by Ernest Hemingway and Toni Morrison will serve as focal points for our discussions about culture and identity (for example, national, ethnic, or gendered) at different historical moments. Our goal will be to see these works as embedded in specific contexts that must be explored in order to understand, as much as possible, the particularized expressions of American identity offered in each.

Texts: Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises; Morrison, Toni. Sula; Course Packet from IT Copy on MLK.

Requirements & Grading: Grades will be based on four exams (20% each), and reading responses/quizzes, attendance, and participation (20%).

Discussion sections are mandatory. In addition to the assigned reading responses, the TA in your discussion section has the option of giving short quizzes or writing assignments. More than one absence from your discussion section could adversely affect your final average.

Instructor:  Wilks, J            Areas:  n/a

Unique #:  35045-35090            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Completion of at least thirty semester hours of coursework, including E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: Literature, Culture, and Identity --

The goal of this course is to study American literature in the fullest sense of the phrase; that is, literature produced by Americans of African, Asian, European, Latina/o, and Native descent. Using the themes of immigration and migration as its focal points, our survey opens with the 17th-century Puritan community depicted in Arthur Miller’s play and closes with a return to a very different Massachusetts, that of the 20th-century Bengali immigrants featured in Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story collection. The primary texts will be supplemented with cultural and historical materials to help contextualize readings.

Texts: Arthur Miller, The Crucible; Charles Johnson, Middle Passage; Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street; Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies; Course packet of supplemental readings.

Requirements & Grading: Four exams, with short answer and essay questions, which cover the four general periods that we will be studying.

Instructor:  Berry, B            Areas:  n/a

Unique #:  35095            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  Longhorn Scholars

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Completion of at least thirty semester hours of coursework, including E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: This course will examine American literature from the Enlightenment era of 18th-century America through the end of the 20th century. We will focus on a myriad of American voices of the late 19th and 20th centuries, noting, as we proceed, both continuities and innovations. We will seek to define, if possible, a genuine national literature that is strong, multicultural, and inclusive. There is a fair amount of reading to be done in this class, but the rewards in seeking to understand America past and present are immense.

Texts: Stephen Crane, Maggie, A Girl of the Street, and Other New York Writings; Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman; Van Jordan, M-a-c-n-o-l-i-a; Cormac McCarthy, The Road; Packet of short stories and poems

Requirements & Grading: Quizzes, 25%; Mid-Term Exam, 20%; Essay, 20%; Final Exam, 25%; Class Participation, 10%

Instructor:  Hedrick            Areas:  n/a

Unique #:  35100-35145            Flags:  Global cultures, Ethics and leadership

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

This variant of E316K is especially recommended for students in the SEN strand of the Bridging Disciplines Program.

Prerequisites: Completion of at least thirty semester hours of coursework, including E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: Literature of Charity and Philanthropy --

This course surveys British literature from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. In it we will examine the cultural, political, and intellectual contexts of the works on the reading list, discuss differences among various literary genres, and consider the ways in which these genres have been employed in different historical periods. The readings for the course all focus in some way on issues pertaining to charity and philanthropy, however. So during the semester we'll also examine the ways in which the concept of charity has been defined in different historical periods and consider the ways in which writers from each period critique their contemporaries in terms of that concept--or critique the concept itself. More specifically, we will ponder a variety of moral and ethical issues that have persistently been bound up with charitable ideals. How, in each age, have proper or worthy charitable objects been defined? What qualities have made an object of charity more or less appealing? When and how was the idea of “marketing” philanthropy developed?  Does the liberal idea of charity, broadly defined, always involve some kind of pay-off for the donor? If so, what kind? A reward in heaven? Warm self-approval? Social credit or “points” with an individual or group? How have different writers, at different times, regarded the distinctions--for both donors and recipients--between personal or individual giving, giving through a private group, and giving through public or governmentally organized structures such as a tax system? How, with these distinctions in mind, have different writers at different times characterized the best ways to distribute charity?

Texts: Chaucer - Canterbury Tales (General Prologue and Prioress' Tale); William Shakespeare - King Lear (Arden); Isaac Barrow - “The Duty and Reward of Bounty to the Poor”; Richard Steele - The Conscious Lovers; Jonathan Swift - “A Modest Proposal”; Samuel Johnson - The Life of Richard Savage; Laurence Sterne - A Sentimental Journey (Oxford); William Wordsworth - “The Old Cumberland Beggar”; Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol; Robert Browning - "Fra Lippo Lippi"; William Booth [W. T. Stead] - In Darkest England; G. B. Shaw - Major Barbara (Harlan Davidson).

Requirements & Grading: Midterm (30%); five short quizzes (20%); final (30%); discussion section work (20%).

Instructor:  Hedrick            Areas:  n/a / B

Unique #:  35150-35195            Flags:  Global cultures

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Completion of at least thirty semester hours of coursework, including E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: Literature of Virtue and Heroism –

This course is intended to provide an overview of British literature from the Middle Ages to the present, surveying a wide range of genres and literary forms. The readings will have a thematic focus on ideas of virtue and heroism. Specifically, we'll study the ways in which notions of virtue and heroism have taken shape over the course of English history; the ways in which these notions are depicted differently in different literary forms; and the ways in which the literary forms themselves change through time, along with the ideals of virtue or heroism they convey. In the first half of the course, we'll consider the ways in which these notions are or are not distinguishable from one another, separating out after a long period of being substantially identical. In the second half of the course we'll examine the ways in which the creative writer becomes a particular kind of hero, one that resembles heroes from earlier eras in some ways and differs from them in others. Throughout the course we'll consider how men and women (and male and female characters in literature) are or are not able to be virtuous or heroic in certain contexts. The approach to the materials will be basically historical, and the lectures will provide historical, intellectual and other kinds of information as a way to illuminate the readings on the syllabus.

Texts: Anon., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Norton edition), John Milton, Paradise Lost (Norton edition), William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part One (Norton edition), Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (Penguin edition), Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Norton edition), Samuel Beckett, Happy Days (Grove edition), Elizabeth Hedrick, editor, Virtue and Heroism: Readings in English Literature (Kendall/Hunt).

Requirements & Grading: Midterm (30%); five short quizzes (20%); final (30%); discussion section work (20%).

Instructor:  Whigham, F            Areas:  -- / B

Unique #:  35200-35225            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Completion of at least thirty semester hours of coursework, including E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: Literature in History --

This course is designed to provide a broad introduction to English literature. In addition to some introductory texts (A. S. Byatt's "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary" and Samuel Beckett's Catastrophe) and various short illustrative texts introduced along the way, there will be four units in this course:

Renaissance: Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and Othello, and various poems

18th-century: Swift's Gulliver's Travels

19th-century Romantic and Victorian Poetry: Blake, Shelley, Keats, Browning

Modern: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger

Requirements & Grading: We'll have four to six lectures and a test on each unit, along with possible frequent in-class clicker quizzes to assess knowledge of the primary materials. (Attendance is required for lecture.) The 75-minute exams will be 75% essay in format, 25% short-answer questions. The essays will consist of identifying and discussing the significance of selected quotations from the works. Together the exams will constitute 100% of your grade (save for section attendance, engagement factors, and quizzes). I plan to have the last exam on the last class day, but it might be necessary, depending on our progress, to have it on the day the final is scheduled. If you make plans to travel after classes end, assuming you'll be free on our finals day, you may have to change your travel plans if you don't want to miss the exam. All exams are required for passing the course: no skipping and averaging. There is no cumulative final exam.

Discussion sections. You'll attend a discussion section once a week. Attendance is required for the sections. You get three free absences. Four section absences and your final course grade penalty will be 0.25 grade point; five = .50 off; six = .75 off; seven = 1.0 off; eight absences and you fail the course.

Instructor:  Doherty, B            Areas:  n/a

Unique #:  35230-35275            Flags:  Global cultures

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  C L 315            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Completion of at least thirty semester hours of coursework, including E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: Global Modern Literature--

We will use the divisions made in our anthology, thus there will be three historical foci: Modernity and Modernism; Postwar and Postcolonial Literature; and Contemporary World Literature. We will examine how history transforms literary values and the impact of individual authors on their literary descendants. Students should acquire a solid idea of what it is that constitutes modernism in literature, as well as an understanding of such terms as postmodernism, postcolonialism, Marxism, realism, etc. It is hoped that from this wide variety of modern and contemporary authors, students will construct the foundation for a lifetime of substantive and enriching literature.

Texts: The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume F, Third Edition. (Cover art is a painting called Tamara in the Green Bugatti).

Requirements & Grading: Test #1 (on Modernity and Modernism), 20%; Essay Test (on texts from Postwar writing; take home), 25%; Final Exam (on texts from 2nd and 3rd section of course), 35%; TA Section Participation, 15%; Live World Literary Culture Review, 5%.

Instructor:  Kaulbach, E            Areas:  n/a

Unique #:  35280            Flags:  Global cultures

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  C L 315            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Completion of at least thirty semester hours of coursework, including E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: This is a course in early Classics: Classics of the West, of Africa, of the Middle East, and of the Far East. We will read nothing written after the 1400s. Works will be interpreted by teachers of the works, as nearly contemporaneous with the works as possible. Class lectures will tell you how and why these selections are important.

Texts: Norton Anthology of World Literature, 2nd edition, Volume A; Timaeus and Critias, ed. Desmond Lee; Sundiata, ed. D.T. Niane; Xerox packet (at IT Copy and Printing, on corner of MLK & Lavaca).

Requirements & Grading: An average of three areas, each of which counts 1/3 of your grade: attendance and quizzes, mid-term essay, final exam. To receive an “A” you must have an “A” in all three areas; same for a “B”. If you fail any area, you fail the class. Miss more than two classes and your attendance grade is reduced by one full grade.

Instructor:  Bertelsen, L            Areas:  II / E

Unique #:  35295            Flags:  Global Cultures

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: Spanning the century and comprising a wide selection of genres, the course will offer readings in significant eighteenth-century authors and texts. The goal will be to provide the student with a chronological, thematic, and contextual understanding of the development and contradictions of the literature produced in Britain between 1700 and 1800.

Texts:

Pope, Major Works (Oxford)

Swift, Essential Writings (Norton)

Haywood, Fantomina (Broadview)

Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (Penguin)

Hogarth, Prints (Dover)

Lewis, The Monk (Penguin)

Various poetry & prose from ECCO

Requirements & Grading: Four 2-page memos, 10% each; two 5-page essays, 25% each; Participation, 10%.

Instructor:  García, P            Areas:  I

Unique #:  35305            Flags:  Global cultures

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: This course studies selected plays of William Shakespeare, one of the most important and widely read writers of the English early modern period. We will read to develop our comprehension and analytical skills in both reading and writing, and we will also examine Shakespeare in performance through film and, hopefully, live theater. A tentative reading schedule follows: A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Twelfth Night; The Tempest; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; 1 Henry IV; Henry V.

Texts: David Bevington, The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Pearson-Longman, publishers).

Requirements & Grading: 4 major exams (100%)

Instructor:  Rumrich, J            Areas:  I / D

Unique #:  35310            Flags:  Global cultures

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: We will read eight plays and various sonnets, concentrating on themes established early in Shakespeare's career, when Elizabeth was on the throne. Aside from seeking insight into Shakespeare’s development as a playwright, we will focus on those moments in his plays that reflect on dramatic or theatrical fiction while nevertheless being a part of such a fiction. Discussions along this line will be pushed toward greater awareness of the historical conditions of Renaissance drama and particularly the conditions under which these plays were performed--during daylight, on a relatively unadorned, thrust stage, with a repertory company of limited size, composed entirely of males. Also of interest are the various dramatic models and idioms with which Shakespeare played, his choices of historical moments to represent on stage, and the pertinence of such play and such choices in the waning years of Elizabeth's reign and the early years of James’s.

Texts: To be announced.

Requirements & Grading: Quizzes: There will be at least five or six unannounced quizzes on the reading. There are no makeups. This rule constitutes the de facto attendance policy. If a student misses class on the day of a quiz, the student receives a zero for that quiz. The margin for error is small; I will drop only the lowest grade.

Midterm and Final: These exams will consist of memorization, formal analysis, identification questions, and short answer essays. The two exams will be the same format and length. The final will not be cumulative with regard to the reading.

Journal: Make two good entries per week; each should take about 30 minutes to write. This is a pass-fail assignment.

Quizzes 20%; Midterm 40%; Final 40%.

Instructor:  Murphy, G            Areas:  IV / U

Unique #:  35320            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: What is literature? Why do we study it? And what methods have literary critics developed to meet those ends? Answering these three seemingly basic questions leads us into the complex and contested realm of literary theory. This course provides an introduction to theoretical debates about the definition and purpose of “literary study” and to modes of interpretation including New Criticism, reader-response criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, Marxist criticism, feminist criticism, structuralist criticism, deconstructive criticism, new historicist criticism and biographical and bibliographic methods.

Texts: David Richter, Falling into Theory.  Additional required readings will be made available in a course packet and on-line.

Requirements & Grading: Three 4-6 page papers, 1 short reflective essay, class participation

Instructor:  Hinojosa-Smith, R            Areas:  IV / U

Unique #:  35325            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

E 325 (Topic 1: Creative Writing: Fiction) and 325F may not both be counted.

Prerequisites: C L 315, E 603B, 316K, or T C 603B.

Description: The quality of the student's writing is an important factor toward the course grade. The course is, above all, an English course. The insistence on English usage should not come as a surprise; you are enrolled in an English class in a university of the first class.

This is an upper division course for writers, and the instructor expects well-written papers. This includes 1) clarity, 2) grammar, 3) punctuation, 4) mechanics, and 5) usage. Students who are not up to the mark are advised to consider this most seriously before enrolling because the instructor insists on those basic requirements. They are basic since words are what writers work with; you are advised to keep this in mind.

No old creative writing material will be considered; hence, the student is to hand in a detailed outline of the first proposed story by the third class meeting. No late papers, no excuses. Late registrants enter this class at their peril.

Requirements & Grading: Four thousand words is the required minimum in Writing Flag courses. Toward this, three stories of 1500 words minimum are required for the course. These will be rewritten until all lapses are corrected; do not expect an increase in your grade because you corrected the material; consider this part of your learning experience.

In-class assignments will also be included as part of the grade.

The papers will be critiqued, e.g., misspellings will be labeled SP, lapses in tenses will be marked T, lack of agreement (pronoun and antecedent; subject with verb) will be marked LA. Other lapses will be marked accordingly. If you have more than three misspelled words, the highest grade to expect is a C, provided there are no other errors. The same applies with errors in tenses, and so on.

For your information: towards, backwards, amongst, and similar terms (which the instructor will point out) are examples of British-English usage; use American English.

Instructor:  La Salle, P            Areas:  IV / U

Unique #:  35330 & 35335            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

E 325 (Topic 1: Creative Writing: Fiction) and 325F may not both be counted.

Prerequisites: C L 315, E 603B, 316K, or T C 603B.

Description: The beginning of the course will stress the development of skills in the various aspects of narration, including writing description, probing character, and plotting. The latter part of the course will involve the writing and rewriting of a complete short story.

Texts: The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, Cassill, ed.

Requirements & Grading: Four writing assignments: 90%; Attendance and participation: 10%.

Instructor:  La Salle, P            Areas:  IV / U

Unique #:  35330 & 35335            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

E 325 (Topic 1: Creative Writing: Fiction) and 325F may not both be counted.

Prerequisites: C L 315, E 603B, 316K, or T C 603B.

Description: The beginning of the course will stress the development of skills in the various aspects of narration, including writing description, probing character, and plotting. The latter part of the course will involve the writing and rewriting of a complete short story.

Texts: The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, Cassill, ed.

Requirements & Grading: Four writing assignments: 90%; Attendance and participation: 10%.

Instructor:  Hart, M            Areas:  IV / U

Unique #:  35345            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: C L 315, E 603B, 316K, or T C 603B.

Description:  This course is an introduction to the launch pad, electric grid, and weird beauty of poetry. Through reading, writing, revision and discussion, students will improve their writing skills and sharpen their ability to think critically while exploring language as a field of charged possibilities. Each student will be expected to write and turn in one poem a week, along with a brief description of their process, interests, goals, etc. Students will also be required to comment on the works of their peers both in writing and in class discussions. Finally, we will also read a few books by some established contemporary poets, and students will write a short response to each of them.

Texts: Madame X by Darcie Dennigan, Canarium Books, 2012; My Love Is a Dead Arctic Explorer by Paige Ackerson Kiely, Ahsahta, 2012; and tentatively I Heart Your Fate by Anthony McCann, Wave Books, 2011. All other texts will consist of student work & handouts.

Requirements & Grading: Original Poems and Revisions, 40%; Responses to Reading, 30%; Class Participation/Workshop, 30%.

Instructor:  Whitbread, T            Areas:  IV / U

Unique #:  35350            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: C L 315, E 603B, 316K, or T C 603B.

Description: Our aim is to encourage students who want to write poetry and to help them improve their skills through: (1) Class discussions of one another's poems; (2) Analysis of selected poems by noted poets that show 
diverse kinds of achievements and suggest possibilities for the students' own experimentation and development; (3) Conferences with the teacher.

At each class meeting, starting TH Sept. 1 and ending TH Dec. 1, class members read and give constructive criticism of each other's poems, and I join in. I also hand back written critiques and suggestions I have put on copies of their poems, and revisions thereof, that they continuously give me throughout the semester.

Texts: No text required. Student poets duplicate and distribute to each of us copies of new poems to be discussed, at a rate of two poems per three weeks.

Requirements & Grading: 90% of the grade is based on the quality and improvement of each student's poems (a sheaf of 8-10 poems is required at semester's end). 10% is based on class participation. Plus/minus grades may be assigned in apt instances. No final exam.

Disability Accommodation: The University of Texas at Austin provides upon request appropriate academic accommodations for qualified students with disabilities. For more information, contact Services for Students with Disabilities at 471-6259 (voice) or 232-2937 (video phone).

Instructor:  Christian, G            Areas:  III / F

Unique #:  35365            Flags:  Global cultures, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: What is “Victorian” about the Victorian novel? What does the novel tell us about the way “Victorians” perceived themselves and their place in Britain, the British Empire, and the world? Is there a difference between the nineteenth-century “English” novel and its Scottish and Irish contemporaries? Among many other things, the Victorian novel concerned itself with questions of identity: national and imperial, economic and social, religious and gender. People accustomed to finding their predetermined place in the social order began to see themselves as part of larger groups with common interests: owners and workers, landlords and tenants, men and women, Whigs and Tories. In this class we will test Disraeli’s famous characterization of Victorian Britain as “Two Nations,” one wealthy and complacent, the other dispossessed and menacing, will be a starting point for examining the Victorian novel’s quest to find a stable basis for personal and social identity in the midst of bewildering change.

Texts: Sir Walter Scott, The Bride of Lammermoor; William Thackeray, Vanity Fair; Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights; Charles Dickens, David Copperfield; George Eliot, Middlemarch; Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge.

Requirements & Grading: Weekly response essays, 25%; 1 oral presentation, 15%; 2 take-home examinations, 30%; 1 final paper (7-8 pages), 30%.

Instructor:  Harlow, B            Areas:  III / F

Unique #:  35370            Flags:  Global cultures, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: The "Victorian novel" acquires its literary-historical designation from Queen Victoria, England's ruling monarch for 64 years, from l837 to l901. For all the monarchical stability, however, profound social, political and cultural changes marked this period in English history and the Victorian age might be variously referred to as the "age of ideology," the "age of capital" or the "age of imperialism." Our readings in the Victorian novel and its immediate precursors will examine its place in European literary history, but that history will be considered as part of a larger process of socio-political changes in domestic England and in the expanding British Empire. The l9th century witnessed enormous industrial development and with it the emergence of the working class as a coherent force. Women, the working class, and empire continued to exert pressure on the literary production of the last half of the l9th century and these concerns will inform our reading of the later novels as well set in the imperial reaches of Africa and India.

Texts: Jane Austen, Emma; Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South; Charles Dickens, Hard Times; Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days; George Gissing, New Grub Street; H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines; Rudyard Kipling, Kim.

Requirements & Grading: 2 research essays (750 wds each), 25%; 1 response paper (750 wds), 15%; 1 paper proposal (500 wds), 15%; 1 final research paper (1800-2400 wds), 25%; Attendance and participation, 20%.

Instructor:  Savarese, J            Areas:  II / E

Unique #:  35375            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

E 329K and 329R may not both be counted. E 329L and 329R may not both be counted.

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: This course will examine the Romantic movement in Britain, a movement often described as an outgrowth of the “Age of Revolution.” From the hopes for the French Republic to the “revolution in poetic language” attempted in Lyrical Ballads, the “first generation” of Romantic writers often framed their literary ambitions in terms of the transformative power of the imagination. We will begin the course by examining that transformative imagination in its social and political dimensions (like the poets Coleridge and Southey’s scheme to found an experimental utopian community in America) and in terms of the increasing importance of “imaginative literature” as a subject of enjoyment and study at the turn of the nineteenth century. We will then consider the various critiques of Romanticism that emerged during the period, not least from a younger “second generation” who criticized their predecessors for abandoning their earlier, revolutionary ambitions. We will also read two longer works—Byron’s Don Juan and Jane Austen’s Persuasion—that we will discuss, alternately, as theoretical engagements with Romanticism and as satires upon the movement.

The interrogation of “Romanticism” as a set of ideological and aesthetic aims, then, begins in the period itself, and endures in recent scholarship’s continuing reassessment of the period. This course will focus particularly on two recent developments. First, while the Romantic movement was traditionally understood in terms of six male poets, that canon has been augmented by the recovery of female writers like Anna Barbauld, Helen Maria Williams, and Dorothy Wordsworth. Second, it is becoming increasingly clear that the “inward” model of literature typically associated with Romanticism—where works are produced by the poet’s transfiguring imagination and read in private by individual readers—emerged within a wider and more diverse field of “popular” literary culture, including the turn to popular, communal song known as the “ballad revival.” To stake out this wider territory, we will consider rural and working-class poets like Burns, Clare, and Hogg. Many such authors were also collectors of local, orally-transmitted, “traditional” songs (which we will both read and hear).

Texts: Longman Anthology of British Literature, Vol. 2A: The Romantics and Their Contemporaries (ed. Damrosch, Dettmar, Wolfson, and Manning—Fifth Edition); Jane Austen, Persuasion (Longman Cultural Edition will be bound with anthology at no additional cost).

Requirements & Grading: Active participation, including contributing to class discussion and preparing informal weekly responses to the readings (40%); a short mid-term paper (20%); and an annotated bibliography followed by a final paper (together worth 40%).

Instructor:  Winship, M            Areas:  II / E

Unique #:  35385            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: “In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?” With this question, first posed in 1820, the Englishman Rev. Sydney Smith pricked the pride of the first generation of writers in the United States. In 1852, the answer to his question was self-evident; many people in Britain and Europe where busy reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. By the end of the Civil War, few educated readers would have denied that a full-blown literary culture and literary tradition had developed in the United States—though later readers, scholars, and teachers have defined and established that culture and tradition in different ways.

In this course we will read a range of important American texts written before 1865, exploring the different ways that our literary culture and tradition has been defined. What makes a text American? What kinds of tradition are we creating when we recognize certain texts as literary or important? What role do politics, religion, and other cultural and social forces play in American literature?

During the semester, the class will meet occasionally in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center to examine original or early editions of many of the assigned texts.

Texts: The Norton Anthology of American Literature, ed. Nina Bayme et al., 8th ed. (2012), Vols. A & B.

Requirements & Grading: Attendance is required of all students, as is participation in class discussion. If you miss more than four classes without proper excuse, your grade will be lowered. Students are encouraged to visit during office hours.

There will be two writing exercises (ca. 1000 words each) during the semester, and a final paper (ca. 1500-2000 words). The first writing exercises will be a close reading of a single poem; the second an investigation and reflection on the publication of works in American literary monthlies of the 1850s. The final paper will explore the nature and meaning of our American literary tradition by discussing a peculiarly American theme in three of the works that we have read during semester. Unannounced quizzes may also be given in class. Only in exceptional circumstances will a late assignment be accepted.

Quizzes and class attendance, 20%; Writing exercises, 25% each; Final paper, 30%.

Instructor:  Reilly, M            Areas:  II / E

Unique #:  35390            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing

Description: The following course will provide you with an introduction to British literature from the Restoration to the Reform Act (1660–1832). This is an era of intellectual, philosophical, social, economic, political, and, last but not least, literary upheaval. We will explore tensions between the emergence of the new and preservation of the old, taking our primary evidence from plays, poems, novels, essays, and popular images. We will consider the arrival of modern concepts of authorship and “literature,” focusing on how these intersected with norms of cultural representation and forms of production. We will read a collection of works known for their satire and sentiment, codes of decorum and moments of sublime inspiration. As we chart the rise of reading publics and literary marketplaces, we will also assess literature’s role in shaping and catering to its audiences’ tastes. We will also explore texts that surprised, enthralled, and troubled readers, appearing from beyond the limits of the known to stimulate the imagination and shock the visceral senses. In the two centuries from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century, Britain established its metropolitan center and global empire, its national ideals and rhetoric of history. These achievements transpired unevenly and retrospectively, meaning different things to different readers. In the process of analyzing literature’s varied role in such transformations, this course introduces you to contemporary critical debates and conversations among academic scholars researching in the field.

Texts: Authors and works will include some from the following list: Dryden (“Song for St. Cecilia’s Day,” “Alexander’s Feast; or, the Power of Music”), Buckingham (The Rehearsal), Swift (Battel of the Books, Gulliver’s Travels/selections, Mechanical Operation of the Spirit), Pope (Rape of the Lock, Epistle to Arbuthnot, The Art of Sinking in Poetry/selections), Addison (Spectator & Guardian/selections), Fielding (Tom Thumb, Shamela), Haywood, Fantomina), Leapor (Crumble Hall), Hogarth (images), Montagu (Turkish Letters/selections), Johnson (Rasselas/selections), Sterne (Tristram Shandy/selections), Equiano (Interesting Narrative/selections), Jones (Translations from the Asiatick/selections), Cowper (The Task/ selections), Coleridge (Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan), Wordsworth (Thorn, Ruined Cottage, preface to Lyrical Ballads), Shelley (Frankenstein), Byron (Don Juan/selections), Moore (“The Fire Worshippers”), DeQuincey (Confessions of an English Opium Eater), Hugh Kenner (The Counterfeiters).

Requirements & Grading: Writing assignments will include one short literary analysis at the beginning of the semester, two 5-page papers later in the term, two short position papers on controversies studied in the course, and a brief review of a scholarly article. Position papers and the article review will be work-shopped preparatory to class meeting held on the materials covered. There will be opportunities to redraft paper to improve one’s grade. Writing will count for 60% of the grade, attendance and class discussion participation for 40%.

Instructor:  Squires, L            Areas:  II / F

Unique #:  35395            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: Artists and evangelists, politicos and pundits have recently been warning us of America’s decline in the face of environmental devastation, secularization, economic calamity, globalization, and nuclear threat. But what are we declining from, and when, precisely, did this fall from grace begin? Was it during the banking crisis of 2008? Was it in the 1960’s during the catastrophe of Vietnam and the rebellion of America’s youth? Was it during the Great Depression, when the foundation of industrial capitalism seemed to be completely eroding? Or do the roots of twenty-first century disillusionment with American hope and promise go all the way back to the Civil War? This course will examine the American Dream and its discontents through a survey of U.S. literature from Whitman and Dickinson to the present. It will prepare students to progress further in the English major by acquainting them with the various experimentations in literary form that characterize the post-Civil War era and engaging with questions of race and religion, gender and class, family and empire that have dominated the cultural conversation for a century and a half.

Requirements & Grading: *There is a strict attendance policy in this class.* 15% - Reading Journal; 20% - Two Close Reading Assignments (2 pages each); 20% - Historical Context Research Assignment (3-4 pages); 20% - Supplemental Reading Assignment (3-4 pages); 25% - Take-Home Essay Exam.

Texts: Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th edition, Vols. C, D, and E; Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court; Willa Cather, O Pioneers!; James Baldwin, Go Tell it on the Mountain; Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness; Toni Morrison, Paradise; A text published in the last five years to be selected by the class (possibilities include Jonathan Franzen, Louise Erdrich, and Junot Diaz).

Instructor:  Cohen, M            Areas:  III / F

Unique #:  35405            Flags:  Cultural diversity (NO writing flag)

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: The story of novels written in the United States to 1920, told in relation to major political and aesthetic movement in the Anglophone world. Fundamental questions about the genre and its contentious development will be raised as we explore the relationship of US-based long fiction to movements such as the Gothic, Realism, Utopianism, and Naturalism, and to modes such as the picturesque, the sublime, and the sentimental. We will ask, among other things, how the novel changed peoples’ ideas about themselves, sent people to war, and built or broke down ideas about “America,” race, gender, and religion.

This course will:

• survey he American novel between the late eighteenth- and early twentieth centuries
• model methods of literary and cultural interpretation
• help students improve critical thinking, writing, and reading skills

Texts:

Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple (1791) (Modern Library: 0812971213)

Charles Brockden Brown, Arthur Mervyn

Lydia Maria Child, Hobomok (1824) (Rutgers University Press: 081351164X)

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance (1852) (Modern Library: 0375757201)

Mark Twain, Puddn’head Wilson (1893-4) (Signet Classics: 0451530748)

Sutton Griggs, Imperium in Imperio (1899) (Modern Library: 0812971604)

Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (1905) (Library of America: 1598530550)

James Weldon Johnson, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912/1927) (Hill & Wang: 0809000326)

Requirements & Grading: Attendance and active participation (including quizzes, weekly short response papers, and short presentations), 25%; mid-term examination, 20%; final examination, 30%; two five-page essays, 25%.

Instructor:  Greiner, C            Areas:  IV / U

Unique #:  35410            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: English 325F.

Description: This course is for students who have a serious interest in writing short stories and have completed English 325F. We will create, analyze, and critique short fiction. Our goal will be to improve the quality of your stories through developing plot and character, refining language, implementing editing techniques, and preparing work for possible publication. The majority of the course will be conducted in a workshop format, with students providing in-depth commentary on one another’s work.

Texts: The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Creative Writing, by Alice LaPlante, paperback, W. W. Norton & Company, reprint edition (January 11, 2010)

The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed by Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Mariner Books (September 19, 2003)

Requirements & Grading: Students will write one brief “flash” story (two to four pages); two short stories (at least eight pages); and one revision of a short story (at least eight pages).

Students will also be required to provide two hard copies (one for the author and another for the instructor) of commentary on every short story discussed in workshop; each of these critiques should be at least half a page. Written critiques will not be required for the flash fiction pieces.

Methods of perfecting work for potential publication will be discussed throughout the course. To develop an understanding of the literary marketplace, students will each research a literary magazine, prepare a one-page report on the periodical, and present their findings to the class. The grade for this assignment will increase by 10% if a student submits to a magazine and provides proof via a printout from an online submission manager. If a student already has an A on this assignment, the extra 10% will be transferred to the portion of his or her participation grade for critiques.

All written work will be presented in 12-point Times Roman type, double-spaced, on numbered single-sided pages with one-inch margins. Every written assignment will receive a letter grade.

Because this course is a workshop, participation will be a substantial part of the grade. The participation grade will be determined by the quality and frequency of in-class comments, pop quizzes on reading assignments, written critiques of students’ work, and attendance. Reading assignments from the texts will be brief, but students should be prepared to discuss them in class. Students may miss two classes without an impact on their grade. Students who miss five or more classes will fail the course. More than five late arrivals will lower a student’s final grade.

The final grade will be determined as follows: Flash story—10%; first short story—20%; second short story—20%; revision of short story—15%; literary magazine report—5%; participation—30% (10% in-class comments and pop quizzes, 10% critiques, 10% attendance).

Optional extra credit: Students may attend a local literary event, such as a reading or book festival panel discussion, for extra credit. A half-page typed report on the event will be required. This report will take the place of a quiz grade.

Instructor:  Hinojosa-Smith, R            Areas:  V / U

Unique #:  35420            Flags:  Cultural Diversity

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  MAS 374            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: This close-reading course focuses on works by men and women descendants of the original colonial settlers under the Spanish crown and some whose ancestors were Mexican-born. The course will cover two genres, the novel and a book of poetry, the latter by Pat Mora. This is a close-reading class.

During the course of the semester, the students will be reminded orally and by the written word that this is a course in an English Department and that punctuation, clarity, mechanics, diction, and grammar are not only important, they are also essential.

Texts: Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street; Tomás Rivera, . . . And the Earth Did Not Devour Him; Pat Mora, Borders; Francisco Jiménez, The Circuit and Breaking Through; Rolando Hinojosa, Ask a Policeman.

Requirements & Grading: This course calls for six to seven essays to meet the writing requirements. The essays are worth 8% and the daily quizzes count for 15 points of the final grade.

This is an English course, and it calls for close reading. The following elements: punctuation, clarity, mechanics, usage, and grammar are the students’ responsibility. It is essential, then, that you know what they mean.

Class lectures will provide the cultural and linguistic backgrounds found in the texts. Student-led discussion either individually or by teams of twos will also form part of the class instruction.

In poetry, each student will memorize and recite a poem from Mora's text; to prevent embarrassment, the recitation will be held individually at the student's and the instructor's convenience in the instructor's office.

Class attendance is a student's responsibility; more than three absences will affect the students' grades; this does not affect death in the family or illness; the latter must be verified by a doctor's written statement.

Instructor:  Kornhaber, David            Areas:  V / F

Unique #:  35425            Flags:  Global cultures; Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: In his 1905 preface to Major Barbara, George Bernard Shaw speaks of an intellectual “world movement,” with proponents from Darwin to Nietzsche, that had altered the scientific and philosophical thought of the nineteenth century and was in the process of transforming the literature of the twentieth. In this course, we will examine some of the central thinkers and texts of the 1800s and early 1900s that helped to lay the intellectual groundwork for the transformations of Modern Literature. Ranging across science, philosophy, psychology, and politics, we will look at how a series of revolutionary ideas transformed contemporary notions of morality, consciousness, and even time and space themselves and how these intellectual developments ultimately shaped and were reflected in the new literary structures and thematics of the twentieth century. Major thinkers to be addressed in this class include Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud, with background readings on their precursors, peers, and inheritors. For our literary readings we will consider work across genres, with a special emphasis on dramatic literature as a tradition particularly engaged with philosophy and social thought. A background in philosophy or science is not required, and the course assumes no prior study in this area.

Texts: Thinkers: Marx, The Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital; Darwin, On the Origin of Species, The Descent of Man; Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, The Genealogy of Morals; Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, Civilization and Its Discontents; Course Reader with additional selections.

Authors: Strindberg, The Father; Shaw, Major Barbara; O’Neill, Strange Interlude; Brecht, A Man’s a Man; Course Reader with selections from Eliot, Pound, Woolf, Joyce, and Stein.

Requirements & Grading: Attendance and participation: 15%; two short essays (5 pages each): 25%+25%; one eight-page essay: 35%.

Instructor:  Kornhaber, Donna            Areas:  V / U

Unique #:  35430            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: C L 315, E 603B, 316K, or T C 603B.

Description: This course presents a detailed examination of a select body of films that proved to be inflection points in the history of the cinema: pictures that changed the vernacular of filmmaking, that opened up new generic or stylistic directions, or that epitomized the work of a widely influential director. Through this examination, students can expect to obtain a solid grounding in film history and film theory as well as an introduction to the study of film genres and movements. Most of all, students will become versed in the major tactics and techniques of film analysis and in the rigorous study of filmic texts. Works to be considered range from the early sound era to the late twentieth century. You will be required to watch two films a week for this class; films will be watched independently, outside of class time.

Texts: Texts include Bordwell and Thompson-Film Art: An Introduction; supplementary readings as assigned.

Likely films include: Lang-M, Chaplin-City Lights, Welles-Citizen Kane, De Sica-Bicycle Thieves, Reed-The Third Man, Kazan-On the Waterfront, Ford-The Searchers, Hitchcock-Notorious, Wilder-The Apartment, Godard-Breathless, Fellini-8 1/2.

Requirements & Grading: Class Participation: 10%; Two short essays (5 pages): 25% + 25%; Long essay (8-10 pages): 40%.

Instructor:  Kornhaber, Donna            Areas:  V / U

Unique #:  35435            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Comparative Literature 315, English 603B, 316K, or Tutorial Course 603B.

Description: From its origins in the 1910s to the rise of Pixar Studios, animation has proved one of the most enduring and versatile artforms of the past century. In this class, we will take a broad perspective on the history and theory of animation in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, both in America and internationally. Students will also be introduced to the theoretical study of the animated film as a cinematic text and to key works on animation in film theory. Key topics and themes to be discussed include early animation of the 1910s and 1920s, major animation studios (Bray, Disney, Warner Brothers, MGM, Hanna Barbara, Van Beuren, UPA, Fox, Pixar) and figures (Harman and Ising, Leon Schlesinger, Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, Walter Lantz, Max Fleischer), television animation, wartime animation, documentary and non-fiction animation, the rise of computer animation, anime and other movements in European and non-Western animation. Ongoing consideration will also be given to transhistoric issues including animation’s shifting place in children’s culture and adult culture, animation’s relationship to popular culture and to high culture, and animation’s intersections with and influence on other media and genres.

Texts: Readings as assigned, provided by the instructor. Animated films to be discussed include selected shorts and full-length features from the 1910s to the present day. You will be required to watch several films a week for this class; films will be watched independently, outside of class time.

Requirements & Grading: Attendance and Participation: 10%; 2 Short Papers (5 pages): 25% + 25%; Long Paper (8-10 pages): 40%.

Instructor:  Berry, B            Areas:  V / U

Unique #:  35440            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: C L 315, E 603B, 316K, or T C 603B.

Description: In this course we will study the history, geography, and culture of Australia as reflected in literature and film. We will begin with background lectures on the founding of Australia, its origins as a penal colony, and the question of whether British-colonized Australia was a “gulag,” as Robert Hughes maintains in The Fatal Shore, or an early instance of imperial globalism. Turning from the First Fleet (Jan. 26, 1788), we will read a modern text, Robyn Davidson’s travel narrative, Tracks (1980), to get a feel for the unique geography of the Outback and the engagement of White Australia with the original inhabitants of this nation, the Aboriginals. Davidson’s feminist perspective on Australia offers irresistible reading.  Then we will view the film Walkabout, which provides an excellent visual introduction to landscape, Europeanism, and Aboriginal culture. Then, back to the past, to the 1890s and the creation of an Australian archetype: the Drover’s Wife. We will begin by reading Henry Lawson’s seminal story, “The Drover’s Wife,” and read an amazing sequence of Drover’s Wife stories to the end of the twentieth century, including “The Drover’s De facto,” “The Driver’s Wife,” and “The Wife’s Drover.” Once again, we return to the historical record. Australia’s development of a national identity, the transition from colony to nation, will be grounded in the film Gallipoli (Peter Weir, 1982). From this point we turn to the last seminal moment to be studied in the course, the election of a Labor government in 1972 and the development of a new sense of history, culture, and creativity. In this vein we will read the urban fiction of two of Australia’s most important short story writers, Michael Wilding and Frank Moorhouse; we will also try to sort out the complicated fictional and metafictional exchange taking place between their stories written about each other and the culture of modern Australia. Finally, we will read Kate Jennings’ Snake, a recent novel of great power and intensity that takes us back to the “dead heart”—the arid interior—in the form of a compressed and highly innovative family saga about feminism, masculinity, and Australia. When you’re finished with this course, the inevitable thing to do, I hope, is to book passage to Oz.

Texts: Robyn Davidson, Tracks; Australian Literature & Film (Co-op Packet); Michael Wilding:  Selected Stories (Co-op Packet); Frank Moorehouse:  Selected Stories (Co-op Packet); Kate Jennings, Snake.

Requirements & Grading: Midterm, 40%; Final, 40%; One short paper, 10%; Attendance & class participation, 10%.

Instructor:  Doherty, B            Areas:  III / U

Unique #:  35445            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: C L 315, E 603B, 316K, or T C 603B.

Description: Let’s have four short courses in the short story, each one centered on a volume of work. The first is Kafka and his descendants, beginning with the master of alienation and including  writers who take up some of Kafka’s concerns and stylistic innovations. A second will take a geographic and cultural foray into literature of China, beginning with the acknowledged master Lu Xun, and moving to more contemporary writers like Wang Meng. A third strain begins with Alice Munro’s deeply psychological and finely crafted stories and read some contemporaries who employ the same kinds of methodology and insight, Like William Trevor and Jhumpa Lahiri. A fourth and final strain will take a very recent collection—Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank—juxtaposed against some powerful contemporary writers. These last may be taken from the weekly selection of writers chosen by The New Yorker during the semester. They may include writers who visit the UT campus or read at Bookpeople during the semester.

Texts: Kafka’s Selected Stories, A Norton Critical Edition, Edited by Stanley Corngold; The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China, Penguin Classics; Runaway, Alice Munro; What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Nathan Englander.

Requirement & Grading: Two tests, on the Kafka and Lu Xun section. Author biographies, literary periods, plot points: 10% each (20%); Two short (2-3-page) papers on individual stories: 20%; Periodic quizzes on the day’s reading (best 5 of 7 taken for grade): 10%; Participation in class discussion analyzing the stories: 10%; Prospectus for sustained analytical paper (2-3 pages): 10%; Final paper (6-8 pages): 30%.

This is a discussion-based format (which includes listening). Absence from class severely limits your ability to discuss or listen. Excessive absences (more than 4) will detract from your grade (10 points for each class day missed after 4).

Instructor:  Friedman, A            Areas:  III / U

Unique #:  35450            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: C L 315, E 603B, 316K, or T C 603B.

Description: The short story is a fairly recent phenomenon: a genre little more than 150 years old. Beginning with Hawthorne and Poe, American writers have been among the greatest writers in the genre, so the focus of this course will be on close, careful reading of American short stories selected for their excellence. We will read them in roughly chronological order to see if we can derive a sense of development, and we will read stories by both well-known and less well-known writers. We will, in addition, consider fiction's allusive qualities (rhetorical, mimetic, mythical, historical, allegorical, intertextual, tonal, etc.) in order to attain a sense of the genre's rich possibilities, and we will read commentary by writers on their own work and that of others.

The class will consist primarily of discussion rather than lectures. Students are expected to be in class, on time, fully prepared, participate actively in discussion, and present brief oral introductions to two of the stories. More than three unexcused absences will result in a failure for the course; two latenesses count as an absence.

Texts: Ann Charters, ed. The Story and Its Writer, 8th ed. Bedford/St. Martins, 2010. Packet of additional readings at Jenn’s, 2200 Guadalupe Street.

Requirements & Grading:  Grades will be based on two short out-of-class essays (10% each); two in-class essays (15% each); a final exam (30%); and class participation, including your introduction of one or two stories (20%).  Class participation includes quality and quantity of class participation and presentations (including good attendance, being on time, being prepared, actively participating in discussion, and oral introduction). Students who sit silently through the course should expect to do poorly in terms both of what they learn and their grade.

Instructor:  Jones, M            Areas:  I / H

Unique #:  35460            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Six semester hours of upper-division coursework in English.

Description: Gwendolyn Brooks and Langston Hughes are two of the most well known African American poets in the 20th Century. Each poet has widely influenced the shape and scope of African American literature; scores of poems and tributes have been written in their honor. Both Hughes and Brooks wrote poetry and prose that captured and critiqued language, experience, and music in African American culture. Hughes and Brooks also wrote prose fiction, autobiography, and edited poetry anthologies. This course will explore Brooks’s and Hughes’s writing as well as their legacy in the work of other writers. A primary objective of this course will be to read, view, and listen to the literary, auditory, and visual record of Hughes and Brooks. Reaching this objective will entail engaging in the substantial archival and critical legacy generated by both authors. Our course will examine the individual and communal expressiveness in Brooks’s and Hughes’s writing within the context of African-American history, literature, and music. We will explore poetic forms such as the blues, rhyme royal, and sonnets. We will also focus on the relevance of race, gender, sexuality, class, and region as key critical frames that can enhance our interpretation of each poet’s corpus. This course holds a writing flag, thus students will be required to complete a high volume of writing, revision, and peer review in order to further develop skills in critical thinking and composition.

Texts: (Tentative) The Selected Poems of Langston Hughes; The Selected Poems of Gwendolyn Brooks; The Big Sea; Maud Martha.

Requirements & Grading: 20% Active Class Participation, Free-Writing, Quizzes, Peer Review; 20% Critical Essay Draft; 20% Critical Essay Revision, Final Paper; 20% Essay and ID Examination; 20% Paired Peer Audio-Visual Presentation.

Instructor:  Houser, H            Areas:  I / H

Unique #:  35465            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  English Honors

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Prerequisites: Six semester hours of upper-division coursework in English.

Description: This course covers the truncated career of David Foster Wallace (1962-2008), one of the most obsessed-over and lauded authors of his generation. We will read some of Wallace's essays and short stories, and all of Infinite Jest. The following questions will motivate the course: 1. What is Wallace's place in US literary history? What is his project for a new fiction? 2. What are his polemics about 20th-century US culture and media forms? Can particular novels and reading practices intervene in these domains? 3. How can the novel and the individual navigate the onslaught of information in the 20th/21st centuries?

We will avail ourselves of the Harry Ransom Center's rich Wallace archive which includes his manuscripts, letters, and personal library. The course culminates in a final project of the student's own design. Students are encouraged to use HRC resources in developing their project questions but are not required to do so.

Texts: Infinite Jest. Possible selections from A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Oblivion, and Girl with Curious Hair, and The Pale King. Short critical readings and prose comparisons.

Requirements & Grading: 20% participation, 10% discussion leading, 15% 5-page close textual analysis, 5% prospectus, 15% bibliographic essay, 35% 12-15 page essay.

Instructor:  Cox, J            Areas:  I / H

Unique #:  35470            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Six semester hours of upper-division coursework in English.

Description: In this course we will devote ourselves to a study of Ernest Hemingway, the winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature. We will read short fiction, novels, and non-fiction from throughout his entire career, beginning with early works such as In Our Time and The Sun Also Rises and finishing with the posthumous A Moveable Feast. We will take formal, historical, and cultural approaches to all these works and discuss, for example, Hemingway the stylist; Hemingway as the voice of the Lost Generation; and Hemingway as an icon of American masculinity. We will also consider issues such as race, nationality, class, and religion that permeate his work.

Required Reading (Tentative): In Our Time (1925); The Sun Also Rises (1926); A Farewell to Arms (1929); Green Hills of Africa (1935); Across the River and Into the Trees (1950); The Old Man and the Sea (1952); A Moveable Feast (1964).

Requirements & Grading: Your overall grade will be calculated in the following way: 60% for three essays of three to four pages each; 20% for one substantial revision of one of the three to four page essays; and 20% for attendance, class participation, and one presentation of a daily reading assignment.

Attendance: Required. Excessive absences (more than 5) will adversely influence your final grade.

Instructor:  Carton, E            Areas:  I / H

Unique #:  35475            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Prerequisites: Six semester hours of upper-division coursework in English.

Description: In the decades following American independence, political and intellectual leaders in the U. S. sought out and promoted examples of American literary talent in order to make the nationalistic argument that the young country was developing a culture commensurate with its growing economic and political status in the world. Nathaniel Hawthorne--the son of a Massachusetts sea captain and the descendant of original Puritan settlers in the New World, including a prominent judge who sent 19 accused witches to their deaths in the 1692 Salem witch trials--was an attractive representative of American literary talent, both for his artistic skill as a fabricator of mysterious plots, rich symbolic motifs, and complex moral dilemmas, and for his American historical subject matter. Hawthorne’s canonization as one of the most illustrious representatives of a new American tradition in English-language literature was somewhat ironic, however, since he tended to take a skeptical, or at least an ambivalent, view of many of his countrymen’s leading articles of faith In an optimistic, expansionistic, future-oriented, outward-looking nation that was both entranced with scientific and industrial progress and convinced of its own virtue and piety, Hawthorne often looked backward and looked inward, drawing lessons from American history and from human psychology about some of  the darker dimensions—self-deception, self-righteousness, egotistical overreaching, emotional and physical violence toward others--of economic, political, intellectual, and religious ambition. Yet, it is his very equivocal perspective on the nation’s formative years, circumstances, and principles that makes Hawthorne’s fiction such a revealing and challenging portrait of America.

Texts: Our readings in this class will include all four of Hawthorne’s novels—The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun, plus a selection of his short stories, passages from his campaign biography for President Franklin Pierce, and his Civil War essay “Chiefly About War Matters, by a Peaceable Man.

Requirements & Grading: Students will write three short (3-4 pp) analytical or bibliographical essays during the semester plus a longer (8-10 pp) research paper. These four pieces of written work will comprise 70% of each student’s course grade. The remaining 30% will be based on attendance and participation and performance on occasional reading quizzes.

Instructor:  González, J            Areas:  I / H

Unique #:  35480            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Only one of the following may be counted: E 349S (Topic: James and Wharton), 376L (James/Wharton: Novel of Manners), 379S (embedded topic: James and Wharton: American Novel of Manners).

Prerequisites: Six semester hours of upper-division coursework in English.

Description: Focusing upon the short stories and novellas of Henry James and Edith Wharton, this course will trace the origins and development of realism as a literary movement and aesthetic strategy in the United States from the late 1870s through the first quarter of the twentieth century. James and Wharton are typically cast as elite authors who wrote about economic and social elites, but how does their work align with and critique the new industrial-driven, immigrant-powered United States after the Civil War? Given the radical social changes during this period in gender, racial, and class terms, how did the realist aesthetic as employed by James and Wharton emerge as both symptom and questioning of these conditions? Situating these texts within their social context will be a major feature of this course.

N.B. James and Wharton are demanding writers who often require more time to read then more recent authors. The works of James and Wharton demand (and reward) close attention, so be prepared to take the time to engage these texts on their own terms.

Texts (Subject to revision): Henry James: Daisy Miller, Washington Square, The Turn of the Screw; various short stories; Edith Wharton: The Touchstone, Ethan Frome, Summer, various short stories.

Requirements & Grading: Course grade will consist of: in-class free writing exercises and quizzes (20%); two peer review reports (10%; 5% each); and two substantial analytical essays. The first of these essays must be significantly revised; the first draft of this 5-6-page essay will count for 20% of the final grade, while the revised draft will count for 20%. The second essay of 8-10 pages will count for 30%. Failure to complete all required coursework will result in a failing course grade.

This is a Writing Flag course with major emphasis upon the development of good essay writing skills. Writing Flag courses are designed to give students experience with writing in an academic discipline. In this class, you can expect to write regularly during the semester, complete substantial writing projects, and receive feedback from your instructor to help you improve your writing. You will also have the opportunity to revise one or more assignments, and to read and discuss your peers' work. You should therefore expect a substantial portion of your grade to come from your written work.

Instructor:  Hancock, I            Areas:  IV / D

Unique #:  35485            Flags:  Global Cultures

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  ANT 324L, LIN 322, MES 322K            Computer Instruction:  No

E 350E (Topic: Gypsy Language and Culture) and 379N (Topic: Gypsy Language and Culture) may not both be counted.

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: This course presents the linguistic history of the Romani ("Gypsy") people, from 11th Century AD India to the present day. Theories relating to this exodus out of the Subcontinent and the subsequent migrations into Europe are discussed on the basis of the social and linguistic evidence available to us. In addition to studying aspects of the lexicon and syntax of the modern American and European dialects of the Romani language, an introduction to Gypsy history and culture will also form part of the course. We will examine the sociology of this Diaspora people, the Indian roots of their music, cuisine and social traditions, external linguistic and cultural influences, and interactions with non-Gypsy peoples. The reasons for the persistence of the stereotypical image of the Gypsy among non-Gypsies will be discussed, and also examined will be the five hundred years of slavery, transportation to the American plantations, the fate of the Romani people in the Holocaust, and the current struggle for civil and political rights since Gypsies gained admittance to the United Nations Organization in 1979.

Texts: Required: Hancock, We Are the Romani People. Course supplement available from Speedway Copying in Dobie Mall.

Requirements & Grading: 1 term paper, 25%; 3 written tests, 60%; 1 book or film report, 15%.

Instructor:  Adams, M            Areas:  II / D

Unique #:  35490            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  English Honors

Cross-lists:  LAH 350            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

The subject of each class meeting may be determined from the assigned reading for the day (see course schedule). The instructor retains the right to vary this syllabus.

Description: The intellectual and cultural foundation of what we call the Western Mind has its origin within the ideas and literary and artistic forms established centuries ago by Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions. This course will explore those ideas and those literary forms as they continue to manifest themselves both singularly and as a complex union responsible for creating the psychological and aesthetic tension in important modern writers. Singularly we find the mental atmosphere established by the Judeo-Christian notions of monotheism, linear time, a sacred text of laws, Judgment Day, Hell and Heaven, Original Sin, a god of history, Satan, salvation, etc., found in literary forms like psalms, folk tales, etiological stories, prophetic poetry, lamentations, extended narratives, character sketches, gospels, and epistles. And we find the mental atmosphere of Greek notions of intellectual freedom, skepticism, Stoicism, democracy, philosophical inquiry, destiny, glory, honor, hospitality, fate, the heroic, etc., found in literary forms like tragedy, odes, the Sapphic, the elegy, the epic, philosophic tracts, and satire. But perhaps most important, we see prevalently in the modern mind a blending of these two mental atmospheres that have created some of our finest stories, plays, and poems as they encapsulate what some have called the sadness of sophistication tempered by the mercy of the imagination—“Need is not quite belief.”

            This exploration will take us back and forth from biblical and Greek and Roman literary texts to contemporary versions or rethinkings. Aeschylus’ Orestia; Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra; the gospel of Mark and Pars Lagerkvist’s Barabbas; the biblical Lamentations and Anne Sexton’s The Jesus Papers; Ecclesiastes and Nathaniel West’s Miss Lonelyhearts; the biblical Job and Archibald MacLeish’s poetic drama J.B., the Garden of Eden story and Paul Valéry’s Sketch of the Serpent, and so on. In essence, this comparative look at ancient and modern literary devices, and the ideas they literally contain, is a study of the creative mind’s response to the mystery of being alive.

Readings selected from the following list: Large selections from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey; Sophocles’ Antigone; Aeschylus’ Orestia; Euripides’ Medea; Horace and Juvenal’s satires; the odes of Pindar, Horace, Catullus, W. H. Auden, Laurence Binyon, Alan Tate, Robert Lowell, Robert Creely, Bernadette Mayer; Sappho’s poetic fragments and the modern Sapphic by Anne Carson, John Frederick Nims, Ezra Pound; elegies of Mimnermus, Propertius, Tyrtaeus, Ovid, Catullus, Jerico Brown, Robert Lowel, A. E. Housman, W. H. Auden, Paul Celan, Rainer Maria Rilke; the Old Testament (the historical books—Genesis, Exodus, etc.—Psalms; the Prophets; Wisdom literature—Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, etc.; selections from the Apocrapha, especially Enoch; the New Testament—the Gospels, Paul’s Letters, Acts, Revelation; Petronius’ Satyricon; selections from Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca; brief selections from the pre-Socratic philosophers; the Persian Avesta; Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts; Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son; short stories by Flannery O’Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, James Joyce, Raymond Carver, Tim O’Brien, Anton Chekov, William Faulkner, and others; Hesiod’s Works and Days ; Archibald MacLeish’s poetic drama J.B.; Par Lagerkvist’s Barabbas; Anne Sexton’s “The Jesus Papers.”

Grading Policy: Attendance is required. Unexcused absence results in a deduction of three points off the final grade—for each unexcused absence. Class discussion is highly valued. In many ways, this is the heart of the class, for it’s by this means that we share insights into the art of a fine story and insights into the human condition—especially our own. These discussions will be open, frank, and respectful. The discussion grade accounts for 10% of the final grade. This is based not on the number of times you contribute but on the quality of your insights and your willingness to share your thoughts. A careful reading of each story for each class is highly valued. To this end, pop quizzes will constitute 15% of your final grade. You must come to class fully prepared each class meeting. The quizzes will be over the readings due for that day. If you miss a quiz due to an excused absence, you must come by my office within one week from the missed class and take an oral quiz. If you’ve missed class with an excused absence for more than one day, you must, upon your return, arrange a time to make up any missed quizzes. These quizzes will result in a grade of pass or fail. If you score from 70-100, you will receive a pass in the grade book, which cannot be averaged into your final pop-quiz grade. If you score lower than a 70, that grade will be recorded in the grade book and averaged into your final pop-quiz grade. This protects the integrity and goal of the pop quizzes—to determine how prepared you were for class NOT knowing whether you would be given a quiz.

If you miss a quiz due to an unexcused absence, you will not be given a chance to make it up. A zero will be recorded in the grade book.

Requirements and Assignments: You will write five analytical essays (4-8 pages). These will be averaged together and constitute 75% of your final grade. You will be given the opportunity to revise the first essay for a grade by improving the presentation and addressing errors in grammar and punctuation. You will not be allowed to add content to your analysis unless approved by me. Those who need help with your writing will meet with me regularly during the semester. I encourage regular visits for every student in order to discuss both the content of the course and ways to improve your writing. As indicated above, quizzes will make up 15% of your final grade, class discussion 10%.

Final grades will be determined on the basis of the following rubric. Please note: to ensure fairness, all numbers are absolute, and will not be rounded up or down at any stage. Thus a B will be inclusive of all scores of 80.000 through 89.999.

A = 90 – above; B = 80-89; C = 70-79; D = 60-69.

Students with disabilities may request appropriate academic accommodations from the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, Services for Students with Disabilities, 471-6259.

Provisional Schedule (subject to change upon notice by the instructor)

To be determined

Instructor’s name:  Michael Adams, Calhoun 316. Office hours MW 4:30-6

Instructor:  Bump, J            Areas:  V / F

Unique #:  35495            Flags:  Ethics and Leadership, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  Yes

E 350R (Topic: Animal Humanities) and 379N (Topic: Animal Humanities) may not both be counted.

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: We will explore the representation of animals in literature, focusing especially on the analogy between racism and cruelty to animals and between the Holocaust and factory farming, an argument made by Coetzee, Derrida, I. B. Singer, and by Monson in his documentary Earthlings. In addition to these moral issues, we will focus on the practical ethics of eating animals, vivisection research on this campus, etc. While most of our texts will be British or American, we will include some examples from other countries. For example, we will discuss the apparent moral superiority of the Jain, Hindu, and Buddhist attitudes toward animals. In addition to the books listed below, our course anthology will include selections from the Bible, and authors such as Montaigne, Bentham, Hopkins, Kipling, Rilke, Black Elk, Kafka, Alice Walker, Ted Hughes, and J. Frank Dobie.

Digital Literacy. Because the "Five Characteristics of a Successful Student at U.T." include "Good computer skills" as well as "Strong writing skills," basic website skills will be required. Students will be expected to check their email frequently (maintaining the correct email address in the U.T. Direct system) along with the course Discussion Boards and Online Gradebook in Blackboard, all especially the day before class. Students will use multimedia to fulfill all the writing requirements and ultimately collect everything on one portfolio web site.

Print Literacy. Required books include the course anthology*; Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty; the Annotated Alice (Norton, 0-393-04847-0) -- BUY ONLY THIS EDITION; J. M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello (Penguin 2003 01420.0481); and Lester Faigley’s The Little Penguin Handbook (Pearson Longman 2007 032124401X). *FOR THE FIRST ASSIGNMENT, students will need the course anthology, which is a collection of xeroxed materials from Jenn's, 2000 Guadalupe (basement of the Church of Scientology at 22nd and Guadalupe, 473-8669). It will cost about $50. Jenn’s takes major credit cards, of course. If you don’t get there within the first few days you might want to call ahead to make sure they have a copy reserved for you.

Requirements & Grading: About 50% of the final grade will be determined by multimedia web projects (200 points for each project and 50 points (X2) for critiquing the projects of others), 14% by the portfolio (140 points); 36% by informal writing (Blogs, 360 points); and up to 24% by class participation (240 points). 1000 points (out of 1,200 or more) are required for an A-; 900 for a B-; 800 for a C-; 700 for a D-. Because more than 1200 points will be available, students can emphasize formal over informal writing or vice versa, class discussion more than the portfolio, etc. However, at the end of the course, students will receive exactly the grade recorded in the online gradebook, even if it is one point short of the next higher grade.

Instructor:  Barchas, J            Areas:  III / F

Unique #:  35505            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  English Honors

Cross-lists:  LAH 350            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: This book-history course tracks the evolution of the modern paperback through author case studies. This survey will start with the so-called “yellowbacks” sold in Victorian railway stations in the 1870s and proceed through to today’s paperbacks as they compete with e-books. We shall linger on the marketing hotspots and explosions of cheap books in 1890s, 1940s, and 1960s. Book covers, the canvas upon which the bulk of book marketing occurs, will be a strong bibliographical focus. The class will make extensive use of the Wolff collection of Victorian binding styles in the HRC (one of the top such collections in the world).

The class will be organized around a central case study, namely the marketing of Jane Austen’s novels from 1833 to now, but will ask every student to pick another major author initially published before 1850, whose work was subsequently reissued in paperback form across the entire historical span of this course. This will allow us to identify which marketing techniques are specific to an author and which are generic to the evolution of the modern book. In the fall of 2012, this class will intersect and take advantage of the TILTS lecture series on “The Fate of he Book.”

Required Readings:

--Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813) and two further 19th-c novels (determined by student interest)

--Phil Baines, Penguin by Design: a Cover Story 1935-2005 (Alen Lane, 2007)

--Nicholson Baker, Size of Thoughts (1997)

--Leah Price, How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain (Princeton, 2012)

And selections from:

--John Carter and Nicolas Barker, ABC for Book Collectors.  8th edn (Delaware, 2004).

--Gerard Genette, Paratexts: The Thresholds of Interpretation (1987); English translation by Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge, 1997).

--The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1998).

--Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford, 1972); corrected rpt. 1974, paperback rpt. Oak Knoll, 1995.

--G. Thomas Tanselle, Book Jackets: Their History, Forms, and Use (Bibliographical Society of the U of Virginia, forthcoming 2011)

Requirements & Grading: Participation, 15%; 3 essays and an annotated bibliography (2 short essays of 3-4 pp each, and one longer essay of 6-8 pp), 60%; In-class conference-style presentations, 25%.

Instructor:  Christian, G            Areas:  II / F

Unique #:  35507            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

E 376L (Topic: Law, Society, and the Novel in Nineteenth-Century Britain) may not also be counted.

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: This course will explore the fictional representation of the legal system and its place in the social order in nineteenth-century Britain. During this period immense economic, social, and political change profoundly transformed the legal identities of individuals and entities, their relations to one another and to property, and their rights and obligations vis-à-vis the state. For example, how were women and the mentally ill constituted as “legal” subjects? Why were certain crimes against property, as well as persons, punishable by death? Under what circumstances, if any, could ordinary people seek redress in the legal system for a personal injury or financial harm? Drawing on texts of novelists such as Scott, Edgeworth, Dickens, Disraeli, Gaskell, and Eliot, as well as on those of legal theorists and historians, we will trace the changing perceptions of the law and its role in "modern" British society. Many of these novelists sought “justice” in fiction where they couldn’t find it in “real” life. Moreover, they attempted to realize in fiction what the legal process itself was designed to produce: a verifiable account of “truth” out of a welter of conflicting evidence. In this way, writing and interpreting the novel resemble the legal process itself.

Texts (tentative): Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights; Charles Dickens, Bleak House; George Eliot, Adam Bede; Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil; Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton; Selections from texts on the history and development of English jurisprudence.

Requirements & Grading: Two take-home essay exams (15% each), 30% of final grade; One short final paper (5-7 pp.), 30% of final grade; Weekly response papers (500 words each), 40% of final grade.

Instructor:  Garrison, J            Areas:  III / F

Unique #:  35510            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  EUS 347            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: E356 will consider representative continental novelists from the 18th to the 20th century.  We will try to distinguish the different national traditions of the novel – the erotic novel in French, the psychological novel in Russian, the domestic novel in German, and the historical novel in Italian -- while at the same time asking how these traditions might converge to create a transnational European form.  The reading will be demanding but rewarding, offering a chance to become acquainted with major works of fiction that have an enduring claim on the western imagination.

Texts: Laclos, Dangerous Liaisons, trans. Helen Constantine (Penguin); Flaubert, Madame Bovary, trans. Lydia Davis (Penguin); Dostoievsky, Crime and Punishment, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokonsky (Vintage); Tolstoy, Resurrection, trans. Anthony Briggs (Penguin); Mann, Buddenbrooks, trans. John E. Woods (Everyman); Roth, The Radetsky March, trans. Joachim Neugroschel (Everyman); Bassani, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, trans. William Weaver (Everyman); Lampedusa, The Leopard, trans. Archibald Colquhon (Pantheon).

Requirements & Grading: Short (4-5 page) paper or midterm exam (20%); Longer (8-10 page) paper or final exam (50%); Reading journal (20%); Attendance and contribution (10%).

Instructor:  Henkel, J            Areas:  IV / U

Unique #:  35525            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

E 360K and LIN 360K may not both be counted.

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: English Grammar examines the syntax or structure of present-day English. Its major aim is to encourage students to think about the English language and English grammar in a new way.

The term “grammar” describes both the linguistic knowledge that speakers of English share (an internalized or mental “grammar”) and any representation of linguistic conventions (a “grammar” or model of English). Thus one course aim is to make explicit the syntactic conventions speakers of English know unconsciously (Why do you interpret “Igor ran up a hill” differently than “Igor ran up a bill”?). A second course goal is to study ways of modeling language structure (How should we describe the linguistic conventions you just applied?). We will use traditional terminology as we investigate English syntax for some of the course, but we will also draw on the methods of generative grammar, especially as we consider alternative explanations for language structure and for linguistic knowledge. A final course aim is to consider English syntax in context. So we will also briefly discuss syntactic variation in American English (regional and class differences in speech), attitudes toward language variation, and controversies involving English usage.

Texts: Martha Kolln and Robert Funk, Understanding English Grammar, Allyn and Bacon, 8th ed., 2009. Course packet (available at Speedway Copy in Dobie Mall or on-line through electronic reserves).

Requirements & Grading: In order to pass this course, you must: 1) work consistently (if not always accurately) on weekly exercises; 2) earn a passing average score on quizzes; 3) complete all exams with a passing average score (no exam may be missed); 4) demonstrate familiarity with required readings; and 5) attend class regularly. Note that these are minimum requirements.

Course grades are calculated in two ways; the instructor counts the highest calculation as the student's final course average. Calculation #1: 25% of the grade based on quizzes, 25% on each of three exams. Calculation #2: 33% of the grade based on each exam. The purpose of the double-calculation system is to ensure that students can use quizzes as genuine learning opportunities. That is, you can use quizzes to improve your grade, but if you've been temporarily confused about something on a quiz you won't be penalized for that in your final average.

Class final course averages are then curved and assigned letter grades. Discussion and attendance are considered essential; thus, this letter grade may then be adjusted up or down (often one-half grade), depending on the student's attendance, class participation, and performance on collected but ungraded assignments. Final grades include "plus" or "minus" grades.

A grade of C will indicate work that meets all the basic course requirements; A's and B's are honors grades, designating work of some distinction. Grades are based only on work assigned to everyone in the class; no extra credit work can be accepted.

Instructor:  Shingavi, S            Areas:  V / G

Unique #:  35530            Flags:  Global Cultures

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  ANS 361, ISL 372            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: In the last twenty-five years, global interest in Pakistani writing has flourished. Partly because of Pakistan’s important role as a frontline state in the war in Afghanistan and partly because of an increase in the number and quality of writers from Pakistan, international publishers have found willing audiences for new Pakistani products. Alternatively, though, this writing still finds itself having to contend with western biases about Pakistan. This course will chart the major themes and directions of Pakistani writing to understand both how Pakistan is represented and how it is consumed/marketed: why are certain kinds of fiction necessary to represent the Pakistani nation? Can the nation ultimately be represented? We will also be interested in major themes: history, Islam, gender, nationality, migration, and class. We will read writers from Pakistan as well as Pakistanis in the diaspora. Students are not expected to have a historical background in South Asia, but are expected to be curious and inquisitive.

Texts: (possible) Rushdie, Shame; Suleri, Meatless Days; Kureshi, My Beautiful Laundrette; Hamid, Reluctant Fundamentalist; Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders; Aslam, Maps for Lost Lovers; Sethi, The Wish Maker; Naqvi, Home Boy; Sidhwa, Crow Eaters; Ali, The Duel.

Requirements & Grading: 

(a)  Weekly blog posts, 250 words (20%) (b)  Midterm (20%) Take-home exam, 2 essay questions, cumulative up to the midterm. (c)   Final (30%) Take-home exam, 3 essay questions – cumulative for the whole semester. (d)  Paper, 6-7 pages (20%) (e)  Participation (10%)

Instructor:  Wilks, J            Areas:  V / G

Unique #:  35535            Flags:  Global cultures, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  AFR 374F, C L 323            Computer Instruction:  No

Only one of the following may be counted: E 360L (Topic: Caribbean Literature), 379N (Topic: Caribbean Literature), 379S (embedded topic: Caribbean Literature).

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: Through a survey of texts from English-, French-, and Spanish-speaking islands, this course seeks to address the complexity of the Caribbean as a geographic construct, that is, the chain of islands stretching from North to South America, and as an imagined site, that is, the tropical destination marketed to North American and European tourists. To do so we will supplement our reading of literary texts from the region with the examination of travel-related texts about the region. Throughout the semester we will consider how the dynamics of slavery and colonialism differed from island to island and explore the multiple manifestations of “postcolonial” life that have emerged across the archipelago since the 1960s. The course will conclude with an examination of the migration of Caribbean authors and texts to the United States and of the resulting development of hyphenated Caribbean-American identities. All texts will be read in English, and the list of proposed texts is subject to change.

Texts: Derek Walcott, “The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory,” What the Twilight Says; Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones; Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Requirements & Grading: Two short papers (4 pages each), 40%; Final critical essay (8-10 pages), 25%; Reading journal, 15%; Rough draft, 10%, Class presentation, 10%.

Instructor:  García, P.            Areas:  IV / U

Unique #:  35540            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  [see Note below]

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

E 360R and RHE 379C (Topic: Literary Studies for High School Teachers of English) may not both be counted.

NOTE: Intended for students seeking a secondary school teaching certificate.

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: Designed for students planning a career teaching English, this course will introduce students to scholarship in literary studies that informs the teaching of literature today. Although it is not a methods course, E 360R will have a practical orientation: we will discuss the reasons for teaching literature, both historically and currently; we will examine some of the contemporary constraints on the teaching of English; and we will pursue how to best develop what Robert Scholes calls "Textual Power." Recognizing that texts are places where power and weakness become visible and discussable, where learning and ignorance manifest themselves, where structures that enable and constrain our thoughts and actions become palpable, this course will explore how the use of the study of literature can help students become better readers, writers, and thinkers.

Texts: Richter, David H., Falling Into Theory: Conflicting Views On Reading Literature; Shakespeare, William, The Merchant of Venice; Vendler, Helen, Poems. Poets. Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology; Cisneros, Sandra, The House on Mango Street; O’Brien, Tim, The Things They Carried; Packet of Xeroxes available at Speedway Printing.

Requirements & Grading:  Short reading responses 30%; 3 short essays (3-5 pages) 45%; attendance and presentations 25%.

Instructor:  Cvetkovich, A            Areas:  V / G

Unique #:  35545            Flags:  Global cultures, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  English Honors

Cross-lists:  LAH 350            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: Focusing on contemporary fiction inspired by actual historical events, this course will explore literature’s value as a forum for cultural memory and public history, with particular emphasis on how it articulates affective histories. A key point of departure for the course will be the use of fiction to explore the absent archive of slavery, in works such as Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved and Saidiya Hartman’s combination of memoir, field work, archival research, and speculative imagination in Lose Your Mother. The course will also draw significantly on the role of fiction in the historical archive of queer sexuality, through texts such as Monique Truong’s The Book of Salt, which imagines the queer life of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas’s Indochinese cook, and Alison Bechdel’s graphic narrative, Fun Home.  It will consider the literature of the Holocaust and 9/11 through Sebald’s Austerlitz and Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, as well as how histories of colonialism and the Americas are represented through a specific focus on the Dominican Republic and the Caribbean in Diaz’s Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. We will consider how this literature’s historical concerns are also global ones that touch on a range of geopolitical regions beyond the U.S., including Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

The course will also take up the history of historical fiction, turning back to Sir Walter Scott and/or Nathaniel Hawthorne to consider the intersections of history and fiction in the formation of the novel as a genre. This historical perspective will inform our discussion of the contemporary relation between fiction and creative non-fiction, including anxieties about memoir’s claims to truth and its usurpation of the novel.

With its focus on how literature produces counterhistories, the course will encourage students in the honors program to explore the role of contemporary writers as public intellectuals. We will, for example, look closely at how the novels we read are situated within popular media, and students will practice writing reviews. Students will also be encouraged to develop critical tools for writing about contemporary fiction, including historical and archival research, so that those who want to write theses in this area can develop a critical relation to the fiction and popular criticism that interests them. In addition to reading the novels themselves, we will likely do some secondary reading in the areas of archive theory, affect theory, history of the novel, and narrative theory.

Texts (tentative): Toni Morrison, Beloved; Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother; W.G. Sebald, Auschwitz; Monique Truong, The Book of Salt; Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Alison Bechdel, Fun Home; Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Requirements & Grading: 35%, 1 long research paper (10-15 pages, including proposal, draft, revision, and peer review); 35%, 3-4 short assignments (a review of a contemporary novel, a historical research assignment, an archive assignment, a report on a public on-campus event); 30%, 3-5 short responses to readings and class participation.

Instructor:  Shingavi, S            Areas:  V / G

Unique #:  35550            Flags:  Global cultures

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  AAS 320, ANS 361, ISL 372            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: This class will consider how fiction from the post-9/11 era (widely called the “Global War on Terror”) has produced a particular vision of Islam and Muslims that both reproduces and challenges the ideology of Islamophobia and refines and critiques prior understandings of Muslims. We will be interested in thinking about the deployment of Islam in political rhetoric; depictions of Islam and Muslims in popular culture; debates about Islam that have entered national life in the US; and novelistic representations of Islam over the last decade.  We will be particularly interested in understanding how ideas about religion intersect but do not overlap with ideas about race, and how the question of opportunities for Muslim women has become a contemporary preoccupation.

Texts: Readings will include: Edward Said’s Covering Islam; Junaid Rana’s Terrifying Muslims; Fawzia Afzal-Khan; John Updike; Martin Amis; Mohsin Hamid.

Requirements & Grading: Midterm exam – 25%; Final exam – 30%; Course blog (250 words weekly) – 15%; Short research essays (4, 2 pages each) – 20%; Participation – 10%.

Instructor:  Hoad, N            Areas:  V / G

Unique #:  35555            Flags:  Global cultures, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  AFR 372G            Computer Instruction:  No

Only one of the following may be counted: AFR 374C (Topic: Literature of African AIDS), E 360S (Topic 2), 376L (Topic: Literature of African AIDS).

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: In this course we will read, watch and discuss emerging cultural representations of the current AIDS pandemic affecting sub-Saharan Africa alongside journalistic, social-science and historical accounts. Many genres will be covered including novels, films, and poems, in order to work through their respective strengths and weaknesses in the difficulty of representing the various aspects of a public-health crisis of overwhelming proportions.

Texts (available at the Co-op): John Le Carre, The Constant Gardener; Phaswane Mpe, Welcome to our Hillbrow; Carolyn Adalla, Confessions of an AIDS Victim; Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power; Stephanie Nolen, 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa; Jonny Steinberg, Sizwe’s Test; Meja Mwangi, The Last Plague; Mark Hunter, Love in the Times of AIDS; Ruth Whitney, Slim; *Course Packet of supplementary materials.

Films to be screened: Yesterday; Fig Trees; State of Denial; The Constant Gardener.

Requirements & Grading: The class will be run as a seminar. Attendance is mandatory. More than one unexcused absence will result in a grade penalty.

Class participation including one presentation will comprise 30% of your grade, two Response Papers of 2-3 pages (10% each) and 1 Final Paper of 8-10 pages (making up the remaining 50%).

Instructor:  Nehring, N            Areas:  III / U

Unique #:  35560            Flags:  Global cultures, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: This course will challenge the modernist canon by emphasizing the stark contrast between modernism and its contemporaries in the avant-garde. The modernists now enthroned in academia are distinguished by works meant to be impervious to mass culture and everyday life, while the avant-garde (e.g., the Situationists behind the Sex Pistols who revived Brighton Rock) represent an attempt to reintegrate art and social life. The study of noncanonical voices in the modern and postmodern British novel reaffirms a role for literature in society.

After examining the canonical modernists (Joyce and Woolf), we will move to a writer who embraces “lower” social and cultural orders (Greene), as well as more recent work by women (Carter, Rhys, and Weldon), a member of the working class (Sillitoe), and a colonial subject (Harris). I will also offer an overview of postmodernism (through Harris, Fowles, and Hornby). Considering in each case how the aesthetic decisions of writers reveal their ideological motives, I hope, in privileging the Sex Pistols’ revival of Greene over the repackaging of Kant by Joyce, to provide a generally refreshing if not liberating experience.

Texts: James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man; Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse; Graham Greene, Brighton Rock; Angela Carter, Love; Fay Weldon, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil; John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman; Alan Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning; Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, Nick Hornby, High Fidelity.

Requirements & Grading: Three 5-6-page papers (the first two revised), 30% each; Short essays and class participation, 10%.

Instructor:  Rumrich, J            Areas:  I / E

Unique #:  35565            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: We will read most of Milton's major poetry and selections from his prose. Approximately a third of the course will be devoted to Paradise Lost. The goal of the course is to inform students about John Milton in his historical circumstances, primarily through study of his poetry and certain of his prose works.

Milton believed that in order to write great poetry, the artist must live a "true poem." Taking Milton at his word, we will pay considerable attention to the extraordinary life and times of this obedient son, who was also a regicidal revolutionary, propagandist, divorcer, heretical theologian, historian, linguist, political philosopher, self-proclaimed prophet, and poet. Given the breadth and variety of Milton’s "true poem," it is a struggle to find coherence in either his life or work. Rather than force an agreement among the various Miltons proposed by modern scholarship, we will seek simply to ask key questions and recognize possible solutions.

One question we will certainly consider is what moved Milton to write an epic in defense of God's ways after he had suffered blindness, utter political defeat, imprisonment, a close brush with a grisly public execution, widespread ridicule, and domestic turmoil, not to mention the gout.

Texts: The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton (Random House, 2007).

Requirements & Grading: (tentative) Midterm and final examinations; unannounced quizzes; memorization assignment.

Instructor:  Bertelsen, L            Areas:  II / E

Unique #:  35570            Flags:  Global Cultures, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: This course will address the cultural shift away from neo-classical values that purportedly occurred in England (and in Europe and America) from the mid-eighteenth century through early nineteenth century. We will begin by reading the work of Pope, Johnson, and Reynolds in an attempt to define neo-classicism. We will spend a good deal of time discussing the emotionally-charged work of the “poets of sensibility” at mid-century and see what Jane Austen makes of the contrast between sense and sensibility in the novel of that name. We will then read the sensational gothic novel The Monk by Matthew Lewis, contextualized with romantic poetry deriving from the gothic. Finally, we will survey the various “romanticisms” of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats.

Texts: Price, ed., Restoration and Eighteenth Century; Wolfson & Manning, eds., Longman Anthology of English Literature: The Romantics; Austen, Sense and Sensibility; M. Lewis, The Monk.

Requirements & Grading: Two 5-page essays, 25% each; three 2-page memos, 30%; one revision memo, 10%; participation, 10%.

Instructor:  Kimball, S            Areas:  IV / G

Unique #:  35580            Flags:  Cultural diversity, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  WGS 345            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: Who talks more, men or women? Who interrupts more often? Which sex uses more proper speech? How do people signal social attitudes in choosing pronouns to refer to mixed-sex groups? How are gender and sexual orientation constructed in linguistic interaction. For thirty years, sex- and gender-related differences in language and communicative styles have been increasingly examined in linguistic studies. Such research indicates that the answers to these questions are more complicated than you might expect. In this course, we will examine some of the research that show how social expectations and power structures intersect to influence the speech women and men use in particular social situations. We will also look at and discuss current research on how people use language to construct social gender and at how historical, economic, and social situations have shaped the language women and men use.

Texts: Mary Talbot, Language and Gender (2nd ed.)

Readings Packet, possibly to include selections from:

• Bergvall, Victoria L., Janet M. Bing, and Alice F. Freed eds., Rethinking Language and Gender Research. New York: Longman, 1996.
• Mary Bucholtz, A.C. Lang, and Laurel A. Sutton, eds., Reinventing Identities. The Gendered Self in Discourse. Oxford/New York. Oxford University Press. 1999.
• Hall, Kira and Mary Bucholtz, eds., Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self. New York: Routledge. 1995.
• Johnson, Sally and Ulrike Hanna Meinhof, eds., Language and  Masculinity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1997.

Roman, Camille, Suzanne Juhasz, and Cristine Miller, eds., The Women and Language Debate, A Sourcebook. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994.

Requirements & Grading: Three short (ca. 5-pages with drafts) papers related to the readings (30% each); Participation in class discussion, occasional informal writing assignments, (10%).

Class attendance is mandatory: If you accumulate more than four (4) unexcused absences your final grade will be lowered.

Instructor:  Henkel, J            Areas:  VI / I

Unique #:  35585            Flags: Cultural diversity, Independent inquiry, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Only one of the following may be counted: E 364T, 376L (Topic: The English Language and Its Social Context), 376L (Topic: The English Language in Its Social Context).

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: The English Language and Its Social Context is a course designed for English majors, future teachers of English and rhetoric, and other language-oriented students who want to know more about the English language, especially about its social meanings and political uses. The course aims to acquaint students with the language theory, history, and research most relevant to teachers of literature and rhetoric. Specifically, we will study: basic principles of language structure and change; social dimensions of language variety; linguistic diversity in the U.S.; English and commercial culture; language attitudes; pedagogical issues involving language acquisition and linguistic difference; linguistic diversity and the teaching of English language and literature; and problems of language and public policy. The course aims not solely to convey information, though of course this will be important, but to encourage students to think in new ways about the language(s) they speak.

Texts: Adger, Carolyn Temple, Walt Wolfram, and Donna Christian, Dialects in Schools and Communities, Lawrence Erlbaum, 2nd ed., 2007; Delpit, Lisa, and Joanne Kilgour Dowdy, The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom, New Press, 2002; Lippi-Green, Rosina, English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States, Routledge, 1997; Tse, Lucy, Why Don't They Learn English?: Separating Fact From Fallacy in the U. S. Language Debate, Teacher's College Press, 2001; a course packet (available at Speedway Copy in Dobie Mall).

Requirements & Grading: Minimum requirements are: 1) satisfactory work on (possible) quizzes and on linguistics problems; 2) satisfactory work on four to five minor written assignments (2-3 pages each); 3) a passing average score on exams (two; no exam may be missed); 4) a satisfactory final paper (approximately 6-8 pages, two drafts); 5) discussion informed by familiarity with the required readings; and 6) regular attendance. Note that these are minimum requirements.

Grades are based on problems and tests (quizzes and problems 10%; exam average 40%) and on writing assignments (minor written assignments 10%; draft and final paper 40%).  Attendance, informed discussion, and courteous classroom behavior are considered essential, and unsatisfactory marks in these areas are deducted from the final average.

Final course grades are assigned relative to the overall performance of the class; in other words, scores are "curved" rather than absolute.  Final grades include "plus" or "minus" grades.  Final class scores may be rounded up or down, according to students' class participation and performance on minor and ungraded assignments.

A grade of C will indicate work that meets all the basic course requirements; A's and B's are honors grades, designating work of some distinction.  Grades are based only on work assigned to everyone in the class; no extra credit work can be accepted.

Instructor:  Mallin, E            Areas:  I / D

Unique #:  35590            Flags: Global cultures, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: We will study seven tragedies by Shakespeare. Through a careful reading of the language, stagecraft, and setting of these texts, we will attempt to acquire a deep understanding of tragic art.

We will employ psychological, theatrical, historical, and symbolic approaches. Despite the depressing theme of the course, we will try to enjoy ourselves while we work. To that end, and in order to put your knowledge to practical and entertaining use, you will perform scenes from each play.

Texts: Individual copies of a standard scholarly edition (Oxford, Cambridge, or other TBA)

Tentative: Romeo and Juliet, Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra.

Requirements & Grading: (tentative) Your responsibility for the first day that a work is discussed is to have read at least the first two acts, unless otherwise indicated on the syllabus. You should also read the critical introductions to each work, although you may find these more useful once you have finished the play. I recommend that you receive as much exposure to the dramas as possible—through DVDs, audio recordings, and local performances, when you can. All plays must be read twice.

Requirements: Attendance; two five-page essays and two in-class exams.

Instructor:  Richmond-Garza, E            Areas:  III / U

Unique #:  35610            Flags:  Global cultures, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  C L 323; REE 325            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: Art in the theater is a ripening, an evolution, an uplifting which enables us to emerge from darkness into a blaze of light.

            (Jerzy Grotowski, “Statement of Principles,” Towards a Poor Theater)

Drama is necessarily public and commercial, paid for and solicited by bourgeois patrons and therefore interacts dynamically with culture and society. The aim of this course will be two-fold: to give an acceptable overview of the rich textuality and performance potential of modern European Drama and to situate its production within the context of the politics and aesthetics of world literature more generally.

The course will focus on the work of six playwrights: Ibsen, Chekhov, Wilde, Pirandello, Brecht, Beckett, and Pinter. Each of these major playwrights will be paired with other playwrights whose work either continues or disrupts his imperatives. We will begin by looking at the great theatrical explosion of the turn of the century in Ibsen and Chekhov, who will be read, along with Wilde and Shaw, in the context of fin-de-siècle aesthetics and politics. We will then trace the development in the 1920s and 1930s of absurdist theatre in the plays of Pirandello, who will be paired with Ionesco, and of “epic” and political theatre in Brecht, who will be read together with Italian Futurism. A selection from Beckett’s plays will be read in the contexts of the two World Wars and the deconstruction of a confident European political or artistic order. The canon will be completed with Ionesco’s and Pinter’s plays and a selection of recent radical political plays, including those of Genet, Soyinka, Puig, Petrushevskaya, and Fugard, that reflects the creation and dissolution of the European empires in Latin America and Africa especially.

Much of the excitement of looking at theatrical texts derives from their multi-mediality, and we shall pillage the UT and on-line resources for performance material and footage. No previous familiarity with drama is expected or even solicited, and I will provide those introductions to theatre and performance theory that I think might be provocative.

Requirements & Grading: 1. Attendance of all class meetings and a 15-minutews oral report. (10%); 2. A book of “Director’s Notes” collected in two halves. (5% + 5%); 3. A short assignment which considers a single play (5 pages). (20%); 4. A research report and commentary (2 pages). (5%); 5. A formal prospectus (100 words). (5%); 6. A longer research essay, on a topic of the student’s choice. (10 pages) (35%); 7. A third assignment (3 pages) (15%).

Instructor:  Heinzelman, S            Areas:  V / G

Unique #:  35615            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  WGS 345            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description:

“Torture has been widely viewed in the past in terms of pain and suffering inflicted on a person – usually assumed to be male – in the custody of the state. However, this narrow understanding excludes many forms of severe pain and suffering deliberately inflicted on women and girls. . . and denies [them] protection from the many egregious forms of severe pain and suffering deliberately inflicted . . . in an assertion of power and control by the state or with its acquiescence.”

-- Amnesty International October 2011, Gender and Torture Conference report

This course examines the various ways in which torture has been defined in the late 20th and 21st centuries with a special focus on issues related to violence against women. The course will assess national and international responses to those acts conventionally regarded as torture, as well as to the many ways in which forms of violence against women—such as rape, domestic violence, and the denial of reproductive rights—take on the characteristics of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. We will ask what happens to state accountability and the state’s responsibility both to prevent harm and to provide remedies to victims when the definition of torture is expanded to include forms of harm that are disproportionally endured by women.

We will examine legal documents, national and international reports, philosophical essays, drama, film, and fiction to reach tentative conclusions about the crisis of state power in relation to the widespread use of torture against women.

Texts: Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, Octavia Butler, the “torture memos” (Bush Administration); The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo (A film by Lisa F. Jackson).

Requirements & Grading: In-class (group) presentation: 30%; Brief response papers: 40%; Final research paper: 30%.

Instructor:  Cvetkovich, A            Areas:  V / G

Unique #:  35620            Flags:  Cultural diversity, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  WGS 345            Computer Instruction:  No

Only one of the following may be counted: Asian American Studies 320 (Topic: Gender, Sexuality, and Migration), E 370W (Topic 9), 370W (Topic: Cultures of Immigration and Dislocation).

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: Contemporary literature in the U.S. has been transformed by a new generation of writers who address the diverse cultures produced by histories of migration. We will consider how literature, with its attention to the relation between personal and historical experience, provides an especially valuable document of migration and intervenes in public discourse about it. We will read contemporary fiction, mostly by women of color, with particular attention to how migration is shaped by gender and sexuality. Regions and cultures to be explored include the Mexican borderlands; African diaspora in the Caribbean; indigenous cultures in Canada; Vietnamese and South Asian diaspora and exile in the context of war; and gay migration from the rural to the urban. Issues to explored include how personal narrative articulates the intersections of gender, race, sexuality, and nation; how diaspora transforms notions of home and ancestry; and how history and memory shape the present. We will also consider the role of the contemporary writer as public intellectual in contributing to cultural and historical understanding.

The course will also provide students with an opportunity to reflect critically on their own national identities as residents and/or citizens of the United States – what does it mean, and what can it mean, to be “American”? Through critical readings and written assignments that construct a range of archival sources (the personal, the historical, the ethnographic), students will be encouraged to situate their own experience within a broader historical and transnational context.

Texts: Sandra Cisneros, Caramelo; Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao ; Monique Truong, The Book of Salt ; Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis I; Eden Robinson, Monkey Beach ; Carolyn Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman.

Requirements & Grading: (Note: +/- grading will be used for portfolio assessment and for the longer paper and group presentation and the final grade will be averaged based on those grades.)

Writing Portfolio:            40%

1) Statement of Goals; Mid-term Self Assessment; Final Self-Assessment

2) Discussion Questions posted to BB every other week

3) 3 short writing assignments: Personal Narrative; History; Ethnography

Final Project: Personal/ Critical Essay            40%

            (includes rough draft, peer editing, group presentation)

Attendance and class participation            20%

Instructor:  Bennett, C            Areas:  III / U

Unique #:  35625            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: “Poetry is Dead.  Does Anybody Really Care?” asked a Newsweek opinion piece in 2003, one of several turn-of-the-century declarations of poetry’s apparent demise. Hardly new, such obituaries recur throughout the twentieth century, forming a long cultural tradition that alternately celebrates poetry’s marginality as a strength or bemoans the irrelevance of contemporary verse. Is poetry, as has so often been announced, dead? How do we account, then, for the role poetry does play in twentieth- and twenty-first-century culture? How have contemporary poets responded to and helped to shape the cultural and aesthetic questions of their times?

            This course, a study of poetry written in English from 1945 to the present, explores such questions through the in-depth consideration of some of the most influential books of poetry published in the last sixty years. These innovative and sometimes controversial books evince how a seemingly moribund poetry has in fact often played a lively part in contemporary culture. In our efforts to understand this part, our readings of these books of poetry will attend to both the poetic traditions and practices they represent and the cultural contexts out of which they emerge and to which they speak.

            Class readings, discussion, and writing will be motivated by three main goals. First, we will seek to develop and fine-tune our skills in analyzing poetry, placing particular emphasis on understanding specific poems, and the workings and effects of poetic language, structures, and devices. Second, we will pursue a deep understanding of the individual books we consider, paying special attention to how each book’s poetics and reception are differently inflected by issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation. Finally, we will more broadly map the richness and variety of the movements, innovations, and impasses in poetry from 1945 to the present.

Texts: Our primary reading will consist of eight to ten individual volumes of poetry from 1945 to the present. Poets whose works we may study include Elizabeth Bishop, Kamau Brathwaite, Gwendolyn Brooks, Anne Carson, Allen Ginsberg, Thom Gunn, Langston Hughes, Robert Lowell, Harryette Mullen, Frank O’Hara, Sylvia Plath, and others.

            Secondary reading will include reviews, scholarly essays, and other materials (including additional poems) providing cultural and literary historical context.

Requirements & Grading: Final grades will be based on two exams (25% each), a six-page essay and optional revision (30%), and participation in class discussion and in informal written exercises (20%). Attendance is mandatory; more than three absences may result in a reduction of the final grade.

Instructor:  Kevorkian, M            Areas:  II / F

Unique #:  35630            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: In the 1830s, Ralph Waldo Emerson began issuing his proclamation that "the need was never greater of new revelation than now." Emerson called upon his audiences to declare themselves “newborn bard[s] of the Holy Ghost"--to produce American scriptures for the nineteenth century. In the body of antebellum texts that has come to be known as the "American Renaissance," authors including Fuller, Hawthorne, Melville, Stowe, Thoreau, and Douglass variously answered a call to prophecy--whether Emerson's or their own. Predominantly focusing on what might more properly be called a "New England Renaissance," our course will nevertheless attend to prophetic voices, and American needs for prophecy, arising both inside and outside of Concord.

Texts: Self-Reliance and other Essays, Ralph Waldo Emerson; also, please see www.rwe.org; Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass; Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Margaret Fuller; The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne; Moby-Dick, Herman Melville; Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe; Walden, Henry David Thoreau.

[Supplementary readings will be handed out in class during the semester.]

Requirements & Grading: Two short (5-6 page) papers and one slightly longer (6-8 page) term paper will make up the bulk of the final grade. Papers will be graded on a “portfolio” basis to afford opportunity for revisions.

Attendance is mandatory; repeated unexcused absences will affect your grade. Weekly brief focused response writings, to be supplemented by reading quizzes, will be a regular feature of the course, to be used as catalysts for discussion and the development of paper topics. Also, you may be asked to take a turn in facilitating class discussion.

Attendance and participation, 30%; Paper 1, 20%; Paper 2, 20%; Paper 3, 30%.

Papers are due in class no later than the date listed on the syllabus. Late papers will be penalized at a rate of one letter grade per class meeting. Plagiarism = Failure.  For guidelines, see <http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/sjs/academicintegrity.html#plagiarism>.

Instructor:  Kaulbach, E            Areas:  III / U

Unique #:  35640            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: The course will begin with some older models for satire (Horace, Boethius, Chaucer, for example), a critical essay, and move into some of the well-known authors (Dryden, Swift, Pope, Irving, Twain, Bierce). All the previous introduce what “satire” means. At this point, we sometimes read pieces suggested by you and could read pieces never intended to be satirical (e.g., Bible or Declaration of Independence). Usually we’ve spent most of the semester on contemporary works (Loved One, Confederacy of Dunces, Clockwork Orange, Catch 22, Doctor Strangelove, Lolita).

The readings could change.  Please let me know what you want to read.

Texts: Packet of readings from IT Copy Service (MLK next to Fire Station); Paperbacks of readings we choose to do.

Requirements & Grading: Final Grade is comprised of attendance (33%), short papers (33%), and final paper or exam (33%). More than 2 absences will result in a “B” for final grade, more than 4 a “C,” etc. You may rewrite papers for a higher grade if the original paper showed some effort. In any case, you must attend and write “A” or “B” papers to get an “A” or “B”.

Instructor:  MacDuffie, E            Areas:  II / F

Unique #:  35645            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: In this course we will study a number of major works of prose and poetry from the Victorian era.  We will pay close attention to the scientific background of the period, and discuss the way in which debates about evolutionary biology, prompted by the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, helped shape the thematic and formal concerns of a number of Victorian writers.

Texts: Authors include George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, H.G. Wells, and Joseph Conrad.

Requirements & Grading: Class participation and in-class writing assignments, 20%; 4-5-page essay, 20%; 6-7-page essay, 25%; 8-9-page essay, 35%.s

Instructor:  Birkholz, D            Areas:  I / D

Unique #:  35650            Flags:  Global cultures, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: An introduction to Chaucer’s narrative and poetic art, as shown in a selection from the dream poems, Troilus and Criseyde, and the Canterbury Tales. Three lecture hours a week for one semester. Prerequisite: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Our selections from the Chaucerian canon will be augmented by other landmark texts, by contemporaries and (as possible) later inheritors. Works will be considered in their social and historical contexts, but also in terms of their evolving critical contexts (that is, from multiple, and sometimes conflicting, theoretical perspectives).

By course’s end, students will have gained a working grasp of late-medieval English literary history and its seminal texts. Just as importantly, students will acquire a set of critical tools (writing, reading, research, and analysis) enabling them to approach classic texts in new and original ways. No prior experience with early literary study is expected, but student engagement, enthusiasm, and self-direction are highly desirable.

Texts:  Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (ed. Kolve & Olson; Norton); The Gawain Poet: Complete Words (tr. Borroff; Norton); The Canterbury Tales: 15th-Century Continuations and Additions (ed Bowers; TEAMS).

Grading & Requirements: (assignment specifics discussed in class; percentages approximate & subject to change)

Gawain-Poet Paper (4-6+ pp.; prospectus, revision, some research): 30%

Chaucer Research Project (8-10+ pp; prospectus, revision, considerable research): 40%

In-Class Performance (writing, discussion, engagement, recitation, daily process work): 30%

On-time Attendance (every absence beginning w/#4 will reduce grade; NC at #9), Required

On-time Completion of Reading, Writing & Feedback Assignments, Required

All assignments must be completed satisfactorily to receive any passing grade for the course.

Instructor:  Lee, J            Areas:  V / G

Unique #:  35655            Flags:  Cultural Diversity, Writing,

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  AAS 320            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: This course examines the memoir as a narrative of personal and community identity. We will read and discuss literary and nonfiction texts that encompass a wide range of Asian American experiences that deal with issues of race, gender, sexuality, class, immigration, foodways, geographical location, and national belonging. The relationship between memory and narrative will be the focus of the course, and some of the questions we will attempt to answer are: how particular is the experience of this author and can it be applied to other Asian American communities/individuals? What kinds of memories or events are often included in Asian American memoirs? Why are certain episodes selected for inclusion in a memoir and others not?

Texts: (potential reading list) May-lee Chai, Hapa Girl; Edith Eaton, “Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of a Eurasian”; Jane Furiya, Bento Box in the Heartland; Bich Nguyen, Stealing Buddha’s Dinner; Eric Liu, The Accidental Asian; Jade Snow Wong, Fifth Chinese Daughter; Mitsuye Yamada, Camp Notes and Other Poems.

Requirements & Grading: Essay #1: 15%; Essay #2: 15%; Revision of Essay #1 or #2: averaged into original grade; Essay #3: 20%; Essay #4: 25%; Class participation: 10%; Weekly writing quizzes: 15%.

During this term we will embark on an interdisciplinary exploration of the African American middle class with a particular emphasis on the post-Civil Rights era. Using autobiography, film, history, photography, literature, music, television, and sociology this course will consider how the black middle class has been imagined, defined and represented. By examining the debates within and about the black middle class, we will complicate constructions of race in America. The course is particularly interested in investigating the following: the idea of class privilege for a racially marginalized group; conflicts between the black middle class and the working class; the role of the black middle class in policing black sexuality; the notion of middle class rage; the rise of the black nerd; assertions of racial authenticity; the new black aesthetic; the politics of affirmative action.

Texts:

Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition

Nella Larsen, Passing

Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun

Amira Baraka/LeRoi Jones, The Dutchman

Instructor:  Woodard, H            Areas:  III / G

Unique #:  35665            Flags:  Cultural diversity, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  AFR 374F; WGS 340            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: This course proposes two primary objectives rooted in past and present literary representations of slavery. Thematizing “the trope of the talking book,” (Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s The Signifying Monkey), the course first examines seminal slave narratives, e.g. the literature of the enslaved as discursive strategies, from self-actualization and resistance to early formations of a black literary discourse. The course then explores how slavery is (re)written, controversially in a presentist context by contemporary authors, particularly in historical fiction or neo-slave narratives that seek to restore agency and reclaim subjectivity for enslaved individuals. Ultimately, the course engages larger issues about the different venues that writings about slavery offer for academic disciplines, literary instruction and/or pedagogy.

Required Readings: Elizabeth Alexander, The Venus Hottentot: Poems; Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother; Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Classic Slave Narratives; Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition; Suzan-Lori Parks, The America Play and Other Works; Marlene Nourbise Philip, Zong!; Fred D’Aguiar, Feeding the Ghosts; Edward P. Jones, The Known World; Course Pak (Speedway on Dobie).

Requirements & Grading: .75: Three critical essays (25% each; 4-5 pages per essay, typed, double spaced) and one major rewrite of essay I or II (includes peer evaluation; see revision instruction handout); .15: Response papers based on course reading (1-2 pages), reading quizzes, class participation; .10: Oral group presentations, accompanied by one-page written report

Attendance: Regular attendance is required. More than four absences will be sufficient grounds for failure in the course. The four allowed absences will include illness, deaths of relatives, and other emergencies. If you are more than five minutes late or leave before class ends (without permission), you will be counted absent for that class. You are responsible for all work covered in your absence.

A (94-100); A- (90-93); B+ (87-89); B (84-86); B- (80-83); C+ (77-79); C (74-76); C- (70-73); D+ (67-69); D (64-66); D- (60-63); F (0-59).

Plus/minus grades will be assigned for the final grade. This is a writing-intensive course. No final exam is given.

Instructor:  Richardson, M            Areas:  II / G

Unique #:  35670            Flags:  Cultural diversity, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  AFR 372E            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Only one of the following may be counted: AFR 374 (Topic 2: African American Literature through the Harlem Renaissance), 374F (Topic 1: African American Literature through the Harlem Renaissance), E 376R.

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: The eighteenth century saw the inauguration of writing from enslaved Africans in America. Even from a condition of bondage, their work contributes to literary and intellectual debates about the nature and limitations of freedom, personhood and citizenship. We will begin by examining issues of gender and sexuality from the perspectives of slaves and freed people. We will also examine works by African American authors writing a generation after slavery as they look back to slavery in order to imagine the future of African Americans. This course is a survey of major black writers in the context of slavery and its immediate aftermath from the eighteenth century and ending in the beginning of the twentieth century. Throughout the course, we will view films and documentaries that illuminate this period of African American culture and history.

Texts: Henry Bibb: Narrative of the life and adventures of Henry Bib; Olaudah Equiano: The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings; David Walker: Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World; Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life; Harriet Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: Iola Leroy; Charles Chesnutt: Marrow of Tradition; Nella Larsen: Quicksand and Passing.

Requirements & Grading: Two Short Papers (4-6 pages each), 40%; Final Paper, 40%; Attendance, 10%; Participation, 10%.

Instructor:  Woodard, H            Areas:  II / G

Unique #:  35675            Flags:  Cultural Diversity, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  AFR 372E            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: Is the problem of the 21st century still the color line—as W.E.B. Du Bois (The Souls of Black Folks) termed it a century ago? Or have we reached a so-called “post racial” or racially transcendent phase or era in which race has significantly declined—ideas foregrounded in writings by Julius Wilson and Paul Gilroy, among others? How is the color line implicated in a postmodernist framework differently than in a modernist one? For example, writers like the late Claudia Tate argue that because of the continuation of racial oppression and “the demand for black literature to identify and militate against it, black literature evolves so as to prove that racism exists in the real world and is not a figment of the black imagination.” Such a view resists psychoanalytical readings that center the individual’s primary nurturing environment, rather than the external circumstances that precondition that environment. Conversely, psychoanalysis readings of racism risk designating race as pathology. Enter Epifano San Juan, who observes that race is “an unstable and decentered complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle…. It is a framework for articulating identity and difference, a process that governs the political and ideological constitution of subjects/agents in history.” This course engages the eclectic quality of African-American literature since the Harlem Renaissance.

Texts: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Ann Petry, The Street; Toni Morrison, Beloved; August Wilson, The Piano Lesson; Harryette Mullen, Sleeping with the Dictionary; John Edgar Wideman, Cattle Killing; Van Jordan, Macnolia: Poems.

Requirements & Grading: .75, Three critical essays (25% each; 4-5 pages per essay, typed; ds)--one major rewrite of essay I or II (includes peer reading; see revision handout); .15, Response papers (1-2 pages), reading quizzes, class participation; .10, Oral group presentations, accompanied by one-page written report.

Attendance: Regular attendance is required. More than four absences will be sufficient grounds for failure in the course. The four allowed absences will include illness, deaths of relatives, and other emergencies. If you are more than five minutes late or leave before class ends (without permission), you will be counted absent for that class. You are responsible for all work covered in your absence.

Papers: Papers are due at the beginning of class on the date assigned. Late papers will not be accepted. Do not slide papers under my door. Use the MLA (Modern Language Association Stylebook for all papers. Type papers on white, 8.5" x 11" paper, using one side only. Bind pages with a paper clip.

Grading Scale: A (94-95; A- (90-93); B+ (87-89); B (84-86); B- (80-83); C+ (77-79); C (74-76); C- (70-73); D+ (67-69); D (64-66); D- (61-63); F (0-60).

Instructor:  Cox, J            Areas:  III / U

Unique #:  35680            Flags:  Cultural diversity; Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: The many enduring contacts and conflicts between diverse communities have always been of interest to American novelists. In this class, we will consider the contributions to this literary history made by authors who place these contacts and conflicts at the center of their work. In our consideration of the novels on the reading list, we will discuss issues such as representation and self-representation; familial, cultural, communal, regional, socio-economic, and national identities; and immigration, assimilation, and cultural authenticity. We will discuss the specific kinds of borders between people that these authors erase, negotiate, and, often, reconstruct in old and new ways and look at the specific kinds of contacts and conflicts between people and the various consequences of and resolutions to these conflicts that these authors depict. Primary goals of the course include closely examining the aforementioned key features of the twentieth- and early twenty-first century U.S. novel as well as strengthening your critical reading and writing skills.

Texts: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925); Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926); Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937); Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957); Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (1985); Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake (2003); Nina Maria Martinez, Caramba! (2004); Philip Roth, The Plot Against America (2005); Sherman Alexie, Flight (2007).

Requirements & Grading: Your overall grade will be calculated in the following way: 60% for three essays of three to four pages each; 20% for one substantial revision of one of the three to four page essays; and 20% for attendance, class participation, and one presentation of a daily reading assignment.

Attendance: Required. Excessive absences (more than 5) will adversely influence your final grade.

Instructor: Kornhaber, David            Areas:  IV / U

Unique #:  35690            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  English Honors

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Enrollment in or completion of at least one Honors section of an English course, admission to the English Honors Program, and consent of the honors adviser. Enrollment restricted by department.

Description: According to the Honors Thesis Manual, a thesis is “a sustained examination of a central idea or question, developed in a professional and mature manner under the guidance of a faculty supervisor and a second reader.” That sounds easy enough, but how does one get there from here? This course offers something of a roadmap. Over the course of the term we will examine literary criticism from the “inside out” and hone skills essential to a successful honors thesis.

Along the way, we will address a number of questions, both practical—How do I use the MLA Bibliography? What’s the difference between a footnote and an endnote?—and theoretical—What counts as a valid argument about a literary work? What is the relation between literature and theory? Theory and practice? This course will: first and foremost prepare students to write an honors thesis. Members of this course will explore various methods of literary and cultural interpretation, consider what it means to conduct literary research, and learn how to take their research and writing to new levels of expertise.

Texts: Required Core Texts:  Tom Stoppard, Arcadia (Faber and Faber, 1994).  0571169341A. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. and trans. Burton Raffel (Signet, 2009).  0451531191. Required Secondary Texts: Wayne Booth, et al, The Craft of Research (Third Edition) (University Of Chicago Press, 2008). #978-0226065663; Marjorie Garber, A Manifesto for Literary Studies (University of Washington Press, 2003). #978-0295983448; Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing (Norton, 2005). # 978-0393924091.

Optional Supplementary Text: Eviatar Zerubavel, The Clockwork Muse: A Practical Guide to Writing Theses, Dissertations, & Books (Harvard, 1999) #0-674-13586-5; Richard Bullock and Francine Weinberg, The Little Seagull (Norton, 2011). 039311519.

Requirements & Grading: (assignment logistics, rationales, and approaches will be discussed at length during class)

Final Thesis Prospectus (4-6 pp.) & Annotated Bibliography (20-25+ items)            30%

Writing Sample (15-20 pp. section or sections of your actual thesis)            30%

In-Class Performance (quality & consistency of discussion; preparation; engagement;

informal writing; writing-process & bibliography tasks; peer feedback; Symposium)            30%

On-time Completion of Reading, Writing-Process, Research, & Peer Feedback Assignments            10%

On-time Attendance (note: every absence beginning with #4 will reduce grade; NC at #9)            Required

Plus/minus grades will be assigned for the final grade of the course. The university does not recognize the grade of A+. Evaluation percentages approximate & subject to minor change.

Instructor:  Wojciehowski, H            Areas:  IV / U

Unique #:  35695            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  English Honors

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Enrollment in or completion of at least one Honors section of an English course, admission to the English Honors Program, and consent of the honors adviser. Enrollment restricted by department.

Description: According to the Honors Thesis Manual, a thesis is “a sustained examination of a central idea or question, developed in a professional and mature manner under the guidance of a faculty supervisor and a second reader.” That sounds easy enough, but how does one get there from here? This course offers something of a roadmap. Over the course of the term we will examine literary criticism from the “inside out” and hone skills essential to a successful honors thesis.

Along the way, we will address a number of questions, both practical—How do I use the MLA Bibliography? What’s the difference between a footnote and an endnote?—and theoretical—What counts as a valid argument about a literary work? What is the relation between literature and theory? Theory and practice? This course will: first and foremost prepare students to write an honors thesis. Members of this course will explore various methods of literary and cultural interpretation, consider what it means to conduct literary research, and learn how to take their research and writing to new levels of expertise.

Texts: Required Core Texts:  Tom Stoppard, Arcadia (Faber and Faber, 1994).  0571169341A. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. and trans. Burton Raffel (Signet, 2009).  0451531191. Required Secondary Texts: Wayne Booth, et al, The Craft of Research (Third Edition) (University Of Chicago Press, 2008). #978-0226065663; Marjorie Garber, A Manifesto for Literary Studies (University of Washington Press, 2003). #978-0295983448; Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing (Norton, 2005). # 978-0393924091.

Optional Supplementary Text: Eviatar Zerubavel, The Clockwork Muse: A Practical Guide to Writing Theses, Dissertations, & Books (Harvard, 1999) #0-674-13586-5; Richard Bullock and Francine Weinberg, The Little Seagull (Norton, 2011). 039311519.

Requirements & Grading: (assignment logistics, rationales, and approaches will be discussed at length during class)

Final Thesis Prospectus (4-6 pp.) & Annotated Bibliography (20-25+ items)            30%

Writing Sample (15-20 pp. section or sections of your actual thesis)            30%

In-Class Performance (quality & consistency of discussion; preparation; engagement;

informal writing; writing-process & bibliography tasks; peer feedback; Symposium)            30%

On-time Completion of Reading, Writing-Process, Research, & Peer Feedback Assignments            10%

On-time Attendance (note: every absence beginning with #4 will reduce grade; NC at #9)            Required

Plus/minus grades will be assigned for the final grade of the course. The university does not recognize the grade of A+. Evaluation percentages approximate & subject to minor change.

Instructor:  Bruster, D            Areas:  III / U

Unique #:  35705            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: This course examines British and American plays written in the latter half of the twentieth century. Our reading may include A Streetcar Named Desire, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Homecoming, Look Back in Anger, Top Girls, Plenty, and Angels in America (Parts One and Two).

Requirements & Grading: Grades will be determined on the basis of three 6-7-page essays, two examinations, and class attendance and participation (measured in part by pop quizzes).

Three 6-7-page essays, 50%; Examinations, 30%; Attendance and participation, 20%.

Instructor:  Houser, H            Areas:  VI / I

Unique #:  35710            Flags:  Independent Inquiry, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Six semester hours of upper-division coursework in English.

Description: Environmental criticism—or, ecocriticism—is a vibrant area of literary scholarship that seeks to understand the cultural origins of environmental relations and responses to ecological threat. This course starts from the premises that 1) to understand emerging environmental issues, we must look beyond facts and data to the stories that literature tells, and 2) to understand contemporary cultural production, we must analyze texts' environmental imagination. Thus, we'll explore the role of fiction—on page and screen—in creating environmental consciousness in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. As we develop a critical vocabulary for interpreting recent eco-fiction, we'll sort out trends in environmental representation and debate over the past 40 years.

The following questions motivate our study: How do the ways that stories are narrated affect understanding of environmental relations? Are there more or less "successful" genres and formal strategies for addressing environmental emergencies? What stance do contemporary authors take toward scientific developments? Toward activism? How do writers and filmmakers balance the demands for human justice and the welfare of ecosystems? Students will explore these questions and others in seminar discussions, and informal and formal writing that culminates in a self-defined research project.

Texts: Novels: Atwood, Oryx and Crake; Ozeki, All Over Creation; Silko, Ceremony; Sinha, Animal's People

Films: Dunn, The Unforeseen; Kennedy, The Garden; Stanton, Wall-E

Essays & scholarship by: William Cronon, Annie Dillard, bell hooks, Kate Soper, Evelyn White.

Requirements & Grading: participation (20%), course blog (10%); project prospectus (5%); 2 short essays (25%); bibliographic essay (10%); research essay (25%); presentation (5%).

Instructor:  Carter, M            Areas:  VI / I

Unique #:  35715            Flags:  Independent Inquiry, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

E 379S (Embedded Topic: Envisioning England: 20th Century Literature and Film) may not also be counted.

Prerequisites: Six semester hours of upper-division coursework in English.

Description: This course features ethnic, immigrant, gay, working-class, and canonical British literature and film. A number of the works are concerned with post-imperial and post-colonial legacies, class, English and British tradition and cultural inheritance, and the intricacies, complexities and contradictions of national and personal identity. We will be examining the works aesthetically and formally; we will additionally consider the works in light of their specific social, political, and historical contexts. Some of the assigned works are shaped by critical and theoretical turns; these include Modernism (Woolf), Documentary realism (Apted, Richardson, Leigh), Poststructuralism and Cultural Studies (Steedman, Samuel, Higson), Postcolonial Studies (Naipaul, Selvon, Hollinghurst).

Texts (proposed): Virginia Woolf, The Years; Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners; Allan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner; Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (sections); Carolyn Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman; Linton Kwesi Johnson, Mi Revalueshanary Fren; Allan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty; Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal?; selected essays and speeches by Virginia Woolf, Enoch Powell, Margaret Thatcher and others.

Films: (proposed): Humphrey Jennings, Listen to Britain (1942); Tony Richardson, A Taste of Honey (1961); Basil Dearden, Victim (1961) & All Night Long (1962); Lindsay Anderson, If... (1968); Terence Davies, The Long Day Closes (1992) and Of Time and the City (2008); Michael Apted, 28-Up (1985), 35-Up (1991); Shane Meadows, This Is England (2006); Mike Leigh, Happy-Go-Lucky (2008); Christopher Morris, Four Lions (2010), Andrew Haigh, Weekend (2011).

Requirements & Grading: Two 2-3 page critical analysis essays on selected text or film: 10% each (20% of final grade); One 3 page research paper outline, with annotated bibliography with 6 required items, 2 of which must be book-length studies or an anthology of collected essays; the other 4 items must be print articles or essays: 15% of final grade; One 10-12 page critical analysis essay: 45% of final grade; Consistently active, significant and substantial participation: 20% of final grade.

Absence policy: regular attendance is absolutely necessary. This is a very demanding, time-consuming, reading- and viewing intensive class. Some weeks there will be a required film, along with required reading assignments. Writing about film, like writing about literature requires re-viewing and closer sustained analysis. It is absolutely necessary for students to have viewed the required film(s) before class analysis and discussion. On-campus screenings will be arranged by the Professor; if you cannot attend a scheduled screening, it is your responsibility to view the film independently before the class discussion. If you have not viewed a required film on the discussion date, you will be marked absent for that day. Active, significant, and substantial participation comprises a substantial portion of the final grade (30%); silence, passivity, or a lack of preparedness will not serve you well in this class.

Regular attendance is required: 3 non-medically excused absences will lower your grade by a full grade (an A will become a B); 4 or more absences will guarantee your failure of the class. An incomplete grade (X grade) will be granted only in the case of a documented medical emergency.

Class policies: This is a technology-free class; all notes must be taken in notebooks. The use of computers, Blackberries, cell phones is strictly prohibited; exception for full compliance to this rule will be granted only for students with a documented medical need.

Instructor:  Kimball, S            Areas:  VI / I

Unique #:  35720            Flags:  Independent Inquiry, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

E 379R (Topic: Lexicography) and 379S (embedded topic: Lexicography) may not both be counted.

Prerequisites: Six semester hours of upper-division coursework in English.

Description: Did you know that the first English dictionary, A Table of Alphabeticall of Hard Usual English Words, was published by Robert Cawdrey in 1604? Although later dictionary editors were less enthusiastic about doubling letters than Cawdrey was, the history of dictionary making has been a complex—and sometimes controversial—process involving attempts to provide guidance to the general public about standard, word meanings, etymology, and usage. After a short overview of the history of English dictionaries, which have evolved from short glossaries of “hard words” (technical terms and difficult vocabulary items) to works that attempt to capture most of the vocabulary of English, we will look in detail at how dictionaries are constructed. Topics we will cover include how words are defined, how etymologies (or word histories) are constructed, and how dictionary editors attempt to meet the needs of various audiences, including children, non-native speakers of English, and English-speaking adults, while simultaneously trying to construct dictionaries as records of the English language as it is used. We will also look at how dictionaries are related to other reference works, such as encyclopedias, and at how dictionaries are changing in the rapidly evolving world of computer technology. I hope to provide a guest speaker who can talk about career opportunities in lexicography and reference publishing and to take the class on a virtual “field trip” in which we will explore various dictionaries on the World Wide Web and see that they not only recapture early traditions of the lone lexicographer like Cawdrey compiling a glossary of “hard words,” but that they also exploit World Wide Web technology in ways earlier lexicographers could hardly have imagined, for example, by linking standard dictionary definitions to more extensive encyclopedia-type material, or by using animation to help define terms in American Sign Language.

Texts: Book: Sidney I. Landau, Dictionaries: the Art and Craft of Lexicography. Cambridge University Press (2001 edition); Course packet with short readings from popular and somewhat more scholarly works (e.g., a selection from Elisabeth Murray’s Caught in the Web of Words, a book about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary and short articles on how to define words).

Requirements & Grading: 1) Dictionary-type definitions of several English words with 3-4-page commentary on lexicographical methods and choices in writing the definitions (30%). A draft will be required.  2) End-of-semester 15-20-page paper (50%) and short oral presentation (15%). A draft will be required.  3) Class participation (5%).

Instructor:  Nehring, N            Areas:  VI / I

Unique #:  35725            Flags:  Global cultures, Independent inquiry, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Only one of the following may be counted: E 376L (Topic 7: Poets and Punks), 379R (Topic: Poets and Punks), 379S (embedded topic: Poets and Punks).

Prerequisites: Six semester hours of upper-division coursework in English.

Description: English Culture After 1945 — The postwar Age of Affluence elicited very different reactions in English literature and popular culture. The anger of the Angry Young Men, such as John Osborne, resulted in large part from their frustrated uncertainty over what was happening to the class structure. Was the working class really disappearing? In this respect the myth of Affluence seems to have befuddled the literary. As if to fathom the ostensibly new society, English writers turned to examination of popular culture as a historically unique extent, leaving an exorbitant, though largely hostile record. On the other hand, as the English field of "cultural studies" has shown, working-class youth subcultures, through an ensemble of commodities and musical allegiances, exposed quite successfully the limits of affluence. The very opulence of the Mods, for example, in Swinging London in the 1960s highlighted the irony that their income came from dead-end jobs. When the punk subculture arose in 1976, as a confirmation finally in popular culture of the continuing existence of social misery and the working class, a new relationship with literature was struck by radical bohemians. Graham Greene was placed in the service of the Sex Pistols—to the considerable illumination of both.

This course in postwar English culture will concern the ways in which different types of cultural productions and activities succeed and fail to penetrate the veil of popular myths like "affluence.” My particular aim is to inject volatility into conventional notions of the hierarchy of high and mass culture. The postwar fiction, poetry, drama, and music studied in the course will lead on to an England far removed from traditional "literary landscape":  the seaside amusements of Brighton, the sleazy Soho of Absolute Beginners, and the Carnaby Street that embraced Clockwork Orange (quite subversively, given the Tory pedantry at the core of the novel). The realm of art, I will argue, can be drawn into everyday life with progressive results. The course will be concerned with history, literature, music, and subcultural sociology—the fields that have made up "cultural studies."

Texts: Fiction: Colin MacInes, Absolute Beginners; Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange; Graham Greene, Brighton Rock; Nick Hornby, High Fidelity.

Drama: John Osborne, Look Back in Anger; Edward Bond, Saved; Trevor Griffiths, Oi for England.

Sociology: Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style.

Requirements & Grading: Two 6-8-page essays (both to be revised), one 18-25-page term paper: 90%; Attendance and Participation: 10%.

Instructor:  Bennett, C            Areas:  VI

Unique #:  35730            Flags:  Writing; Independent Inquiry

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Six semester hours of upper-division coursework in English.

Description: “Gossip exalts in poetry,” declares Robert Frost. This might seem a strange claim, since gossip’s ostensibly frivolous talk about others appears at odds with common conceptions of poetry as serious, solitary expression. Yet from the talk of the town to the modern gossip column, and from loose lips sink ships to don’t ask, don’t tell, American poets have persistently engaged gossip as a rhetorical model and a source of inspiration, turning to the strategies of idle talk in part to address shifting ideas of privacy and publicity, and self and community, and in part to reinvigorate poetic practice.

Starting with the assumption that poetic gossip thus provides a rich vantage from which to consider twentieth-century American poetry and culture, this seminar proposes two main lines of inquiry. First: in a digital era marked by an extraordinary and increasing ability—and desire—to spread gossip rapidly and widely, what can a rich tradition of poetic gossip tell us about the pleasures, uses, and risks of idle talk? And second: how can the history and style of gossip—especially insofar as it has been associated with marginalized identities (particularly women, gay men, and the working class), linked to mass culture and celebrity, and bound up with technologies from the telephone to Twitter—help us to better understand the forms and social practices of modern and contemporary poetry?

We will explore these questions by studying poems that represent gossip, poems that enact gossip, and poems that adopt aspects of gossip’s style. We will further consider gossip about poets and their poems, and how it might shape the reception of their work. We will also, by way of comparison with gossip, pay attention to forms of everyday and intimate talk more often associated with poetry, such as conversation and confession. Finally, we will think more broadly about gossip’s value as a metaphor for different kinds of collaborative and multi-voiced poetics, and for various strategies of unofficial meaning-making at work in twentieth-century poetry and beyond.

Texts: We will read and discuss poems by David Antin, John Ashbery, Gwendolyn Brooks, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Goldsmith, Langston Hughes, Edgar Lee Masters, Harryette Mullen, Frank O’Hara, Ezra Pound, D. A. Powell, James Schuyler, Juliana Spahr, Gertrude Stein, and others.

Secondary reading will include essays on modern and contemporary poetry and poetics, scholarship on gossip in the social sciences and the humanities, legal accounts of gossip, and (in the form of reviews, interviews, letters, journals, memoirs, and biographical excerpts) juicy instances of poetry-world gossip.

Requirements & Grading: Final grades will be based on participation (both in class discussions and in short, weekly, written responses) (25%), a six-page essay and revision (25%), and a ten-page essay (50%). Attendance is mandatory; more than three absences may result in a reduction of the final grade.

Instructor:  Ferreira-Buckley, L            Areas:  VI

Unique #:  35735            Flags:  Writing; Independent Inquiry

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

E 379R (Topic: Social Problems in Nineteenth-Century British Literature) and 379S (embedded topic: Victorian Literature and the Condition of England) may not both be counted.

Prerequisites: Six semester hours of upper-division coursework in English.

Description: Poverty. Class relations. Gender. Crises of authority. Industrialization. How do nineteenth-century British writers depict these issues, and what do those depictions reveal about the social, political, and aesthetic concerns of their time? What insights do they offer about how British writers viewed themselves and the world? We’ll address these questions as we explore both the literary texts and the types of research scholars conduct to open up those literary texts.

We’ll read novels (Dickens’ Hard Times, Gaskell’s Mary Barton, M. Shelley’s Frankenstein); poems by Rosetti, Tonna, Barrett Browning, and Kipling; and essays by Arnold and Huxley.

Because this course is an undergraduate research seminar, the syllabus will be organized around the research process: aided by readings and activities, each student will formulate a preliminary topic/ question and refine it based on research; devise a tenable research plan; locate, engage with, and use appropriate sources; and draft and revise a paper suitable for submission to an undergraduate journal or for delivery at an academic conference. Students need not have had prior research experience to be successful, only a willingness to work hard and immerse themselves in their projects.  Given our short time together—a mere 15 weeks—students will need to be proactive, vigilant, and industrious.

We will also work with nineteenth-century British materials housed in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center and study the methodologies archival scholars use.  Students may choose to design their projects around archival materials.

My expectation is that students will leave E 379R more skilled at constructing sound and effective arguments. They will of course be expected to adopt a professional attitude toward revising, editing, and proofreading their work. (Students need not come in confident about their skills, but they must be committed to improving them.)

The class will primarily be intensive discussion and work based on our common reading and students’ research projects, but I will occasionally offer brief lectures. Students should think of this course as an ongoing conversation in which they play a vital role and as a workshop that offers them ongoing feedback on their own work. As we discuss the literary texts on our syllabus and challenges posed by class members’ individual research projects, we will also confront and attempt to answer questions that challenge literary scholars of all periods: How does historical research open up a literary text? What sorts of historical background does a twenty-first century reader “need” in order to understand a particular literary text? How do different theoretical lenses change what readers get from a text? What dangers and benefits come from generalizing about a period’s literature? Our investigations will familiarize us with a range of scholarly practices and will help us be self-reflexive about our own interpretive practices.

Texts: We’ll read novels (Dickens’ Hard Times, Gaskell’s Mary Barton, M. Shelley’s Frankenstein); poems by Rosetti, Tonna, Barrett Browning, and Kipling; and essays by Arnold and Huxley.

Requirements & Grading: 2-page project proposal & written project updates: 5%; annotated bibliography: 10%; book review: 5%; research paper and abstract: 60%; research journal, research exercises and presentations, peer reviews: 20%; class attendance and participation required to pass course.

Instructor:  Graham, D            Areas:  VI / I

Unique #:  35740            Flags:  Independent Inquiry, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Six semester hours of upper-division coursework in English.

Description: Although the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963 is one of the most thoroughly documented events in American history, the whole episode remains unsettled, the source of ongoing debate, unease, and a myriad of conspiracy theories. In this course I propose to study that day in Dallas from three perspectives. First we will try to establish a factual basis from a reading of Vincent Bugliosi’s Four Days in November followed by student reports based on independent readings regarding different phases of Lee Harvey Oswald’s life. The second part of the course will focus on fiction inspired by the assassination: Edwin Shrake’s Strange Peaches, Don Delillo’s Libra, and Adam Braver’s November 22, 1963. We will also read Norman Mailer’s Oswald’s Tale.  Finally, we will take a look into the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, which constitutes the “Fantasy” part of the course title.

This course will also have an HRC component. The Don DeLillo Collection and the Norman Mailer Collection will be used in our study of the works by those authors. Edwin Shrake’s papers may also be consulted at Texas State University-San Marcos.

I envision the course as a multi-layered investigation into how language and research are employed to create structures of factual as well as emotional truths or fictions.

Requirements & Grading: There will be a writing assignment worth 30% and a longer, closing paper worth 60%. Class attendance & participation: 10 %.

Instructor:  Reckson, L            Areas:  VI / I

Unique #:  35745            Flags:  Independent Inquiry, Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Six semester hours of upper-division coursework in English.

Description: Experimental Gestures: The Kinesthetics of American Literature--

At the turn of the century, Americans made much of gesture: scientists and physicians worked to pinpoint gesture’s expressive mechanisms; anthropologists set out to record indigenous sign languages; painters and photographers took up the art of human motion; and theorists of acting, set on defining the body’s theatrical lexicon, distinguished between “subjective” and “objective” gestures. Within this cluster of preoccupations, the body was quite literally a text, a site of exchange and interaction, and the source of endless experiential data. Attending to gesture allowed artists and scientists to explore the complexities of human agency, perception, and performance; attending to the art and science of gesture in this course will do the same for us. Reading literature alongside photography, pantomime, vaudeville, silent film, and modern dance, we’ll examine how the human body-in-motion emerged as a tantalizing site of inquiry, experimentation, and representation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Together we will examine what kind of histories are embedded in culturally specific gestures; whether gesture can be a mechanism for social change; and how literature might help us navigate these questions, even as it produces its own (historical, stylistic, and theoretical) gestures.

This course will introduce students to archival research, as well as to a burgeoning new field of interdisciplinary scholarship on gesture and kinesthesia (or the sensation of bodily movement). Students will have the opportunity to recover, share, and analyze archival materials as they investigate topics for the final essay, and to work across literature, performance, photography, film, and other visual media.

Texts: Readings will include literary texts by Mary Austin, Elizabeth Bishop, Stephen Crane, Henry James, James Weldon Johnson, Helen Keller, and Gertrude Stein, among others; visual art by Thomas Eakins, Thomas Edison, D. W. Griffith, and Eadweard Muybridge; performances by Josephine Baker, Charles Chaplin, Martha Graham, and Buster Keaton; and historical texts by Charles Darwin, John Dewey, William James, and Garrick Mallery.

Requirements & Grading: Engaged participation and two in-class presentations on visual and archival materials (20%); one short literary analysis (10%); one review of a scholarly article or book chapter (10%); research project abstract, annotated bibliography, and final research paper (60%).

Instructor:  Faigley, L            Areas:  VI

Unique #:  35750            Flags:  Writing; Independent Inquiry

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

E 379R (Topic: Travel Literature) and 379S (embedded topic: Travel Literature) may not both be counted.

Prerequisites: Six semester hours of upper-division coursework in English.

Description: The focus of this course will be on the reinvention of travel literature as an active and diverse genre. At a time when tourism has triumphed over travel and when you can surf the Web while drinking a Coke throughout much of the world, the possibilities of travel have been rediscovered by some of the best writers living today.

We will begin the course by examining the urge to travel and what we learn from traveling, starting with Robyn Davidson's solo odyssey across the Australian desert with four camels and a dog. Then we'll read Dervla Murphy's tale of a bicycle trip from Ireland to India, Redmond O'Hanlon's trek through the jungles of the Congo, Jon Krakauer's account of disaster on Mt. Everest, and Sara Macdonald's wanderings in India.

You will keep a reading journal, which you will share with the class. You'll also write a travel essay, an essay on a travel book, and a seminar paper organized around a central issue or question raised in three travel books.

Texts: • Robyn Davidson, Tracks, Vintage, 1995, ISBN 0-679-76287-6 • Dervla Murphy, Full Tilt, Overlook, 1987, ISBN: 0-87951-248-2 • Redmond O'Hanlon, No Mercy, Vintage, 1996, ISBN 0-679-73732-4 • Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air, Anchor, 1998, ISBN: 0-385-492089 • Sarah Macdonald, Holy Cow, Broadway, 2003, ISBN 0-7679-1574-7 • Online readings.

Requirements & Grading: Reading journal 35%; Travel book map 5%; Travel essay 20%; Term Project 40%.