English 100 - English for Non-Native Speakers
4 semester hours
Hayes, Karen
English for Non-Native Speakers is an introductory course in reading, writing, and speaking skills for students whose first language is something other than English. Course work will include essays, presentations, and a research project, but will be adjusted to meet the needs of the current group of students. The class emphasizes an introduction to American culture and college life as well as language skills. Departmental permission required.
English 101E - Introduction to Expository Writing
4 semester hours
Askeland, Lori
Theme: Begging, Borrowing, and Stealing. "The unexamined life is
not worth living," Plato quoted the words of his teacher, Socrates, thousands
of years ago, and since that time thousands of teachers have borrowed it, and
sometimes just stolen it. But what do his words mean? To me, he means: in
order to live a truly authentic life, a life we can really call "our own," we
have to re-examine our lives and ask hard questions of ourselves. Because it
might turn out that we're living a script that serves someone else's needs,
but not our own. So, ideally, in a liberal arts college, we learn to reflect
on our lives and choices, to narrate our past experiences to ourselves and
our reactions to those experiences, in order to understand what our lives mean,
now, and how best to live our lives, with integrity, into the future. The
processes and questions we're going to develop in this course will help you,
because they require you to pay careful attention to the sources of the ideas
you have borrowed, to make sure you can explicitly explain those sources and
that you can discern their underlying goals, values, and assumptions even
(regardless of whether you share them or not). You do this work in order to
figure out where you stand in relation to them. I will ask you to keep asking
questions like: Who is likely to benefit from this idea? Who is likely to be
hurt by it? What kind of world does this writer imagine, and do I want to be
a part of that world? What kind of world would I like to help create, for
myself and, someday, my children? Which ideas have the most promise, to
borrow and build on? In what ways might they need to be re-vised, for us,
today? And, by doing so, you'll be on your way to an examined life. Writing
intensive, includes a researched paper.
English 101E - Introduction to Expository Writing
4 semester hours
Wilkerson, Carmiele
The reading and writing in this course will center on the theme: "Origins." Simply, "origins" can be defined as, "the thing from which something develops, or the place where it comes from (e.g. the origins of the universe). Origins can also refer to ancestry (e.g. the ethnic group, social class, or country that somebody belongs to or that somebody's family comes from)." We will define and re-define "origins" using short readings/articles by various authors and by reading longer social studies of origins by authors Lorna Goodison, Caryl Phillips and W.E. B. Du Bois. Because writing is the foundation of Expository Writing, this course has been designed to aid in your development into a confident, responsible and persuasive writer. We will write at each class meeting. By the end of this course, students will:
(1) develop competency in all stages of the writing process
(2) develop critical thinking and reading skills
(3) develop a writing standard consistent with the MLA style guide
English 101E - Introduction to Expository Writing
4 semester hours
Jones, Mary Ellen
The American frontier-home to Native American prophets, drought and grasshopper-dueling farmers, black cavalrymen, women earning more in the gold fields from their pie baking than their customers did in the mines, Irish and Chinese railroad construction workers, bank robbers and cattle rustlers and social reformers-was declared "closed" 116 years ago. Yet it has remained a central element of American culture. We'll use the 19th century American frontier as the focal point for the term's writing and research. Students will write a series of short papers culminating in a research paper. The course goals are to develop writing skills which will be useful in subsequent college courses and to explore a fascinating period of America's past and its influence on contemporary American life. Occasional out-of-class assignments, probably including a visit to an 18th century trade fair on Labor Day weekend, will be required; do not plan visits home that weekend until the first paper assignment is discussed.
English 101E-Introduction to Expository Writing - Writing About Media
4 semester hours
Inboden, Robin
Our primary goal in this course is, of course, to improve your skills as a writer of expository prose. To that end, we will do a lot of writing of various kinds, focusing on sentence structure, organizational skills, critical thinking, liveliness, and argumentation. Of course, all good writers need something to write about, so I've chosen to center the topics for writing around movies. I hope that's something we can all feel free to think about and talk about, and that you have interesting opinions you can develop about films. We will be watching a few films and also reading examples of various kinds of writing about film: review, personal essay, history, and critical argument, to name a few. After a series of assignments of growing length and complexity, we will ultimately complete a short researched argument. Success in the course will depend on active participation and serious work through the process of revision as well as on the quality of the papers. Writing Intensive.
English 101E -Introduction to Expository Writing: Memory, Memorial, and RestitutionAll writing is to a large extent an act of memorial. When we write, we record what has happened, give shape and meaning to the past, and name what often feels elusive in the immediacy of the present. This course will use this natural connection between the act of writing and the act of remembering as a broad thematic rubric for developing the skills in writing you will need to succeed in college, and even more importantly, begin to make meaning out of the experience of one's life. The course will include a personal essay, an interpretative/analytical essay, a research paper, and finally the construction of a web site. We will read the epic Beowulf, and the novel The Dew Breaker, essays by Edward Said and Patricia Hampl, and articles that explore the nature of memory and the act of memorializing. We will also debate issues surrounding the theme of restitution; how do we make right the past, particularly when some injustice has occurred? In the process of exploring these themes, you will be asked to reflect on your own process of writing, expected to work through several drafts of each paper, and reminded of the value of careful editing in all writing projects. We will meet in conference, work together in small groups, participate in class discussions, and write frequent informal responses.
English 101E - Introduction to Expository Writing
4 semester hours
Davis, Robert
This course is an introduction to composition. We will cover many of the foundational skills of expository writing in class, and we'll work with style and revision exercises from writing handbooks. But ultimately better writing comes from practice, practice, and more practice. Writing is not a matter of chance or good luck. It's not a matter of first-draft inspiration. Successful prose in all disciplines is based on specific techniques any writer can master. We discover these techniques, in part, by analyzing prose we admire and by applying what we learn in that analysis to our own developing style. For this reason, I'll urge you to become an active reader as well as an active writer and to study the essays and narratives in the course as a source for techniques you can use yourself.
English 101E - Introduction to Expository Writing
4 semester hours
Hinson, Scot
"Art is not meant to be polite, secret, coded, or timid. Art is the sphere in which the impulse to hide and lie is the most dangerous. " Dorothy Allison, "This is Our World". Taking intellectual and emotional risks lies at the heart of writing. Testing your limits, stretching your intellectual and creative abilities, expanding the boundaries of your intellectual and emotion lives - this is the writer's project. You will only realize your full potential as a thinker and writer by doing more and better work that you ever thought possible, and, above all, by learning to take risks. This course provides you the opportunities and the environment in which to take the risks necessary for writing well. English 101 is a composition course designed to give you intensive practice in the art of expository writing. The course emphasizes the writing process and the development of clear and purposeful, well-focused writing which addresses a well-defined audience. English 101 will call on your analytical and organizational skills, as well as provide opportunities for you to enhance your ability to design and structure writing and to improve your technical expertise. The course will focus on the conventions of academic discourse and selecting, integrating, and documenting sources. This course is also designed to teach you how to read and write effectively in the University. Also, it will help you to discover that reading and writing are not separate activities, but closely related ones. The course is founded on a belief that learning to read, and see, critically is essential to becoming a proficient, accomplished writer. English 101 requires a series of shorter essays, 4 longer, 5-7 page essays, and an 8-10 page researched essay. There will be a midterm and a final.
English 101E - Introduction to Expository Writing
4 semester hours
Staff
English 101 introduces writing on the college level. Its purpose is to foster the skills necessary to produce coherent, persuasive prose: developing ideas thoroughly, using rhetorical strategies appropriate to subject and audience, focusing and supporting a thesis, structuring well developed paragraphs, generating mature and effective sentences, choosing precise and expressive language, and observing the conventions of written prose. Individual sections employ a variety of techniques for inculcating standards of good prose; but
all 101 classes require a variety of writing assignments including paragraphs and short essays written in and out of class (about 4000 words in total) and a short research paper designed to introduce techniques of library research and documentation (about 2000 words).
English 180 - "How Like a God": Myth, Epic, and Metamorphosis
4 semester hours
Smith, Fitz
Prerequisite: ENGL 101
This course will introduce the student to the work of Greco-Roman myth. With intensive readings of The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, and The Metamorphoses, this course not only will consider the various stories and ideas that myths construct and entail, but also will work to question the more modern myths by which we live today. As a writing intensive section, this course will require a daily reading journal, several short essays, two examinations, and a final analytical paper. The course will emphasize student engagement with the readings and ideas, so class sessions will entail lecture but rely heavily upon class participation. The student will leave this course with a familiarity with the dominant myths of the ancients, as well as a broadened understanding of those myths by which we live - myths more naively known as reality.
English 180 - Film Noir
4 semester hours
Hinson, Scot
Prerequisite: ENGL 101
Film noir, or "black film," has been variously labeled as a period in film history, a style of film, and as a separate film genre with its own themes and conventions. No matter how you define it, films labeled as film noir are "deeply unromantic" films that "take a sneaking delight in their displays of passion gone wrong and of murderous calculation confounded." This course will examine the distinctive "noir" visual style and the characteristic "noir" thematics of lives ruled by an unkind fate. We will also trace the history of film noir from its origins in German expressionism and postwar nihilism, to its golden period in the 1940's and 1950's, and to its persistence through the rest of the 20th century in neo-noir (post classic noir or nouveau noir). We will also look at the debt these films owe to what the French called "serie noir," the searing crime and detective fiction of the 1930's, 40's, and 50's. We will also examine particularly closely the cultural work of these films and their representations. Our goals will include confronting and exploring film noir's and neo-noir's sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and racism. The course requires weekly screenings of film outside of class on Wednesdays from 3:00-6:00 PM. In addition, we will have frequent quizzes, several short papers, a long paper, a midterm and final examination.
English 180: Literature and Madness
4 semester hours
Davis, Robert
Prerequisite: ENGL 101
If it's haunted, freaky, surrealistic, or strange, it's probably in this course. In "Literature and Madness" we'll study literary depictions of mental illness by American writers and examine literature that mixes terror and beauty - an idea that's shaped American notions of spirituality, subjectivity, and creative power since the 18th century. We'll study depression, addiction, suicide, schizophrenia, and sexual trauma. We'll read a brand of horror story H. P. Lovecraft calls "the weird tale" and consider how American writers use tales of madness to explore complex issues of racial and sexual identity: topics too hot to handle in the daylight world of reason and sense. We'll read some old favorites - Edgar Allan Poe and Charlotte Perkins Gilman - but we'll also stretch the notion of "weird tale" to include poetry (by Anne Sexton), photography (by Diane Arbus), and film (by Stanley Kubrick). No previous experience with American literature is necessary, but it helps if you like to read. Prepare to be surprised, fascinated, and possessed. Writing intensive.
English 200 - Introduction to Literary Studies
4 semester hours
Smith, J. Fitz
Prerequisite: ENGL 170, 180 or 190
Introduction to the discipline and methodology of literary study. Designed to refine skills in critical reading and writing, to build a vocabulary of analytical terms and concepts, to raise central questions of literary theory, to introduce a variety of critical approaches, and to give familiarity with the materials and methods of literary research. Readings vary in different sections. Required of the English major and minor. Writing intensive. Every year.
English 200 - Introduction to Literary Studies
4 semester hours
Davis, Robert
Prerequisite: ENGL 170, 180 or 190
This course will prepare students for advanced study in English. It refines interpretative skills developed in earlier literature classes, but it does more than that. It also introduces students to different approaches to literary criticism, and it develops a working knowledge of contemporary literary theory. From the beginning, our emphasis will be on close reading: we'll practice annotating texts, explicating both poetry and prose, reading for connotation and allusion, and identifying not only a text's unity of purpose but also its signs of conflict, paradox, and counter-intention. Our work with literary theory will build on this skill. As the course develops, we'll look closely at a small set of key ideas - "dissemination" in Deconstruction, "resistance" in Feminism, and "cultural poetics" in New Historicism. Despite apparent differences, these concepts come together around a common nucleus: the desire to break open closed systems of thought and welcome the disruptive energies of the literary text. What counts as literature - and what counts as literary criticism - is the power of writing to make strange what was settled, familiar, self-evident, or secure. This commitment to an "open text" brings together three different critical approaches - deconstruction, feminism, and new historicism - and suggests, in fact, a new direction in literary studies as a whole. Exploring the implications of that shift and understanding the historical and philosophical motives behind it are the major goals of this course.
English 240 - Beginning Creative Writing
4 semester hours
Rambo, Jody
Prerequisite: ENGL 101 and ENGL 180A or ENGL 190A/C
Emily Dickinson once sent a note with four of her poems to a famously benighted editor, asking if the poems "breathed." This course is designed for beginning writers who are interested in exploring their own creative processes and discovering what gives breath, or life, to a piece of writing. Students will have the opportunity to write in four literary genres--poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and drama - and to take part in informal peer critiques in a writer's workshop. Course work includes frequent writing exercises, readings, and discussions, a journal that will serve as both creative process log and a place for informal, exploratory writing, and a portfolio of the students' best writing compiled throughout the semester. Writing intensive.
English 241 - Beginning Journalism
4 semester hours
Fallon, D'Arcy
Prerequisite: ENGL 101
This course provides a basic introduction to the practice and principles of journalism, with an emphasis on newspaper production. We will discuss news, features, entertainment stories, opinion and sports writing, as well as interviewing skills, ethics, copy-editing, headline writing, and other related topics. Students will be expected to meet deadlines, do frequent in-class writing exercises, and to thoughtfully and constructively respond to their classmates' stories. Grade will be based on stories produced, occasional quizzes, and class participation. Students will be encouraged to contribute to The Torch, Wittenberg's weekly student newspaper.
English 280 - British Survey I
4 semester hours
Richards, Cynthia
Prerequisite: ENGL 170H, ENGL 180A or ENGL 190A/C
In the course, we will read, discuss, and write about representative texts from the Middle Ages to the beginnings of the British novel in the eighteenth century. We will also seek to locate these texts within the historical and ideological conditions which helped to determine their meaning for their contemporary readers. The course will focus on several themes, such as the construction of the self and the relationship of literature to the state. These themes will help us organize and familiarize a diverse body of literature that can often feel quite foreign to the modern reader. Early British attitudes toward the writer, the reader, and the text can also vary from our own and we will remain attentive to how these attitudes change over the centuries. In the process, you will acquire a basic knowledge of literary terms, styles, forms, critical concepts and significant dates. Finally, we will step back from these concerns to reflect on how English is made and why it is that we read these particular works as representative. Frequent response papers, two final papers, a midterm and a final. Writing Intensive.
English 280 - British Survey I
4 semester hours
Buckman, Ty
Prerequisite: ENGL 170H, ENGL 180A or ENGL 190A/C
In this survey for English literature from its beginnings to the early eighteenth century, students will be introduced to the writings of a variety of authors working in a variety of genres: sonnet, dramatic comedy, epic poem, essay, novel, and others. In order to impose some structure on a rather diverse body of writings, we will trace several broad themes across these works while attending to, so far as possible in a course of this type, the historical milieux in which these texts were written and read or performed. A reading journal, three papers, a midterm and final. Writing intensive.
English 290 - Violence, Purity, and Re-generation in the American Story. 4 semester hours
Askeland, Lori
Prerequisite:
What things would you defend, with violence, if necessary? Is there a
difference between violent actions undertaken for a clear reason and goal,
known and thought about in advance, versus the kind of violence that erupts
from a sense of being attacked? Do we always really understand our own
motivations for our own actions, violent or non-violent? Can a violent action
create peace and new life? Starting in the 1940s scholars started focusing on
violence in American history, literature and culture--and in the late 1960s
the President of the United States, Lyndon Johnson, even commissioned a study
entitled "The History of Violence in America," which is popularly called the
Graham Report; one chapter of that report was devoted to our literature and
culture. During that time, not only was America at war in Vietnam, but women
and ethnic minorities were re-seeing their own pasts in ways that suggested
they had been oppressed by overt and covert forms of violence--now named as
"racism" and "sexism"--which eventually erupted in their own, aggressive
demands for justice and human rights. In this class, we'll be looking at
American literature through the lens of how we, as a society, understand
violence--whether the violence we feel is directed at "ourselves" (however
defined) and the violence we may engage in against others. Books: BEDFORD
ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE (ed. Belasco), CHARLOTTE TEMPLE (Rowson); JOAQUIN MURIETA (Ridge); BENITO CERENO
(Melville).
English 315 - Learning to Live: Contemporary American Fiction
4 semester hours
Hinson, Scot
Prerequisite: ENGL 200
Given the intensity, anxiety, and confusion of a post-9/11 existence in America, is it naive to believe that literature can teach us something about how to live better lives in the 21st century? In Contemporary American Fiction, we'll try to answer this question by reading some of the latest fiction being written in North America. We'll read in a variety of genres, including magical realism, fantasy, detective fiction, and science fiction. To garner some idea of the kinds of questions we are asking in our new century and how we are trying to answer them, we will explore a range of ethnic literatures in North America, including Asian American, African American, Native American, Chicano, and Afro-Caribbean. The course will include writers like Louise Erdrich, Don DeLillo, Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, Thomas Pynchon, Michael Ondaatje, Edwidge Danticat, Marilynne Robinson, Ann Patchett, Jhumpa Lahiri, Susan Straight, Colson Whitehead, and others. Reading and writing intensive, this course requires frequent reading quizzes, a series of short essays, a comprehensive final examination, and a final research project.
English 319-Women in Literature II: British
4 semester hours
Inboden, Robin
Prerequisite: ENGL 200 and 280A or 290A depending on topic for majors
In the last two centuries, the enforced silence of women in the preceding millennium has been broken, sometimes indignantly and sometimes joyously, by a chorus of important women writers. These women begin to give not only a feminine perspective on the "universal" (often mostly male) experience of humanity, but also their versions of specifically feminine experience. Many of the themes we will explore are continuations and expansions of those in Women in Literature I, but this course is not dependent on that one. We will be looking at such common themes as the domestication of woman into the private sphere, the stereotyping of women as either madonna or whore, the education of women, the repression and degradation of women's writing, and the creation of the feminine self. In exploring these themes, we will, I hope, recognize the roots of many of our own ideas about gender, both positive and negative.
We will read a broad selection of British, Irish, and Commonwealth writers, beginning with Jane Austen and including authors such as the Brontes, Barrett Browning, C. Rossetti, George Eliot, Woolf, Mansfield, Boland, and Byatt. Graded work will include two short papers, a mid-term exam, a longer paper (12 pages), and a final examination or project. Writing Intensive. Fulfills the requirement in later British literature for the English major. Counts towards the Women's Studies minor.
English 327 - Advanced Rhetoric and Grammar
4 semester hours
Wilkerson, Carmiele
Prerequisites: ENGL 101, ENGL 180/190 or three writing intensive courses
Advanced Rhetoric and Grammar offers students the background necessary to teach the composing process and rhetorical strategies of writing in secondary schools. We will focus on "descriptive" grammar which studies how language is used in linguistic practice as opposed to a "prescriptive" grammar which lays out the rules about the structure of a language.
This course will extend your understanding of:
(1) rhetorical strategies for reading and writing
(2) the purpose of grammar use in the composing process for the 21st century classroom
(3) the manner in which language changes as a result of social, political, and cultural influences
(4) ways Americans use/are using the English language to promote change and progress through perspectives of American rhetoric
English 342 - Advanced Creative Nonfiction
4 semester hours
Fallon, D'Arcy
Prerequisite: ENGL 240
Essayist Vivian Gornick once said, "Good writing has two characteristics. It's alive on the page and the reader is persuaded that the writer is on a voyage of discovery." This course is designed to launch students on that voyage by studying and writing creative nonfiction, also known as literary nonfiction. It's a branch of writing which can employ some of the same literary techniques that novelists use (dialogue, scene setting, tension, characterization, etc. ) to describe actual persons, places, and events. Students will study and analyze the many shapes of literary nonfiction, from the personal essay to literary journalism, memoir, travel writing, the lyric essay, and flash nonfiction (prose under 500 words). This is a writing intensive course centered around the workshop approach, where stories are discussed and critiqued in class by peers. In addition to reading excerpts from some of the best literary nonfiction writers, students will have multiple opportunities to write and revise their own literary nonfiction. They will also produce one critical paper - an argumentative or exploratory paper - on some writer or some critical issue in the nonfiction genre. Grades will be based on the critical paper, as well as a portfolio of revised work. Prerequisite: English 240. Writing intensive.
English 380 - Westward Ho!
4 semester hours
Jones, Mary Ellen
Prerequisite: ENGL 200
Westward Ho! will explore the constant westering---both in a geographical sense, across the Appalachians, to the Mississippi, to the Great Plains and the Rockies and ultimately, California---and in the search for the elusive American Dream. Viewed through novels, poetry, painting, photography, and music. Fur traders, plains farmers, cowboys and Indians, conservationists and exploiters of the environment will people the course. Most search for their American dream; others' dreams are denied by the influx of the newcomers. We may examine the work of George Catlin and Willa Cather, Owen Wister and Mark Twain, Frank Norris and Ansel Adams, John Steinbeck, Joan Didion, Louise Gidrich and James Welch. If you have time this summer, reading James Fenimore Cooper's The Deerslayer would lay a foundation for the course, though this is not required. There will be several short papers and one longer one. Class participation is essential, though you'll probably need to come in costume only once.
English 380: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States.
4 semester hours
Askeland, Lori
Prerequisite: ENGL 200
Often when we study "non-white" literature, we study it in segregated groups--African
American literature in one course over here, Latin American literature in
another course over there. And even in American literature classes, the
ethnic picture that can emerge is often just "black" and "white. "Â But, of
course, at some level we all know that there were African Americans, Latinos,
Native people, Asian Americans, here during virtually all of "American
history"--some for much longer than Europeans. And from the earliest days, a
rich history of cultural exchanges and inter-ethnic dialogue arose between
African Americans, native people, Latinos, and others. Writers will include:
Phyllis Wheatley, Samson Occom, David Walker, Maria Ruiz de Burton, John
Rollins Ridge, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paule Marshall, Walter Mosley, and others.
Reaction papers, 2 major papers (one researched, approx. 15 pages), a midterm
and a presentation of your research project.
