DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH COURSE DESCRIPTIONS-SPRING 2010
English 101E - Introduction to Expository Writing
4 semester hours
McClelland, Michael
This course will teach the writing process through essays, extensive class discussion and work shopping, reading, and journal-keeping. Students will improve their academic writing skills, including grammar and punctuation, and will learn that there is much more to successful writing than the dreaded five-paragraph essay. Along the way, students should learn more about themselves, their world and the many different values of writing, including the revolutionary concept that writing can be fun.
Class requirement includes four papers, class attendance and participation, regular journal writing and frequent in-class writing.
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 101 - Introduction to Expository Writing
4 semester hours
Fallon, D’Arcy
“You learn to write by writing. It’s a truism, but what makes it a truism is that it’s true.” –William Zinsser.
English 101 introduces students to academic reading and writing processes. You will develop critical reading, writing, and thinking skills through class discussions as well as through the rhetorical analysis of various texts based on the readings in Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. The essays reflect diverse viewpoints and voices exploring the signs and symbols of popular culture, including those found in film and television, advertising, icons and idols, consumerism, etc. Keep in mind that the dictionary lists “essay” only secondarily, as a noun. It is first a verb—“to try out; attempt.” In response to the essays you’ll be reading, analyzing, and writing about, you’ll be developing your own voice and testing your own thoughts. And remember that the key to good writing is revision. As the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart once said, “Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.”
Writing assignments: Three argumentative or persuasive essays based on readings in the textbook using MLA-style documentation. The fourth assignment is a research paper.
English 101 - Introduction to Expository Writing
4 semester hours
Incorvati, Rick
In this class we will approach writing as having both a private and a public function. First, we will use writing as a means of personal reflection and as a way of examining and sharpening your own ideas. Then, we will focus on writing as an avenue for informing and influencing others, and we will practice using some techniques that can make your ideas more persuasive to a critical audience. In the process of preparing your writing for this public function, you will have opportunities to hone your research and writing skills, and you will read essays by some influential writers who have attempted to win over their readers on such topics as environmental policy, civil rights, and freedom of speech. The writing component of this class involves multiple drafts and critical feedback from classmates.
English 101 - Introduction to Expository Writing
4 semester hours
Buckman, Ty
This is a composition course in which students will improve their ability to write clear, forceful prose, to formulate and support a compelling thesis, to employ rhetorical strategies effectively, and, when appropriate, to observe the conventions of academic writing. In the course of the term students will explore a variety of forms, from film reviews to academic research papers, and will also work collaboratively in writing workshops to aid in the revision of their prose. Because the best way to learn to write is to practice writing, some form of written work will be required at nearly every class meeting. This section of English 101 will be unusual in that the majority of readings and other content in the course first appeared in a single year, 1929, and the final research assignment will involve examining life in Springfield during that year as well. Four papers and a final examination.
English 101E - Introduction to Expository Writing
4 semester hours
Thomas, Shannon
E.M. Forster once said, ”How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” As an expository writing class, this course is designed, first and foremost, to help you develop your analytical and persuasive writing skills. E.M. Forster’s quotation will serve as a frame for how we will approach writing in this class. That is, we will write to learn about/develop our ideas, responses, and arguments as well as to communicate these ideas, responses, and arguments to various audiences. The format for the class will be heavily based on in- and out-of-class informal writing exercises as well as formal writing assignments.
The thematic focus for this course will be an in-depth study of American teen culture through the lens of gender. Some questions that we will address include: How do gender stereotypes affect teenagers? How do teen girls and boys experience their teen years differently? What are the central issues that affect teen girls? Teen boys? How are teen girls and boys portrayed in American pop culture? Under this theme we will read a variety of essays, and a few short stories, that address the American teenager.
English 101 - Introduction to Expository Writing: Writing About Film
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, topical debate, 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 101 - Introduction to Expository WritingThis section of English 101 might better be titled “Travel Writing,” or, as the muse says of Odysseus, “He saw many cities, and learned the minds of many men.” We’ll begin with some personal writing. Then we’ll read several either famous or fun travel pieces, study the form, write analytic papers about what we see, and finally, having learned what a travel narrative is, students will write one of their own. So, the course covers the personal essay, expository writing, some creative writing, literary analysis, library research, making an argument and so on. Everything you get in English 101 and a bit more. There will be many short papers (one page or less) along the way, and attention will be given to grammar and punctuation as well as to voice and style. Besides the longer creative nonfiction travel piece, there will also be one longer research paper, on some aspect of the course material. Two exams, a ton of writing, small editing sessions, conferences with the instructor, and a final portfolio of your writing for the semester. Grade is based on best writing, improvement, exams, and class participation.
English 101 - Introduction to Expository Writing
4 semester hours
Wilkerson, Carmiele
The reading and writing in this course will center on the theme: “The Art of Memory.” We will study, through reading and class assignments, how memory is used in writing. The course will focus on the narrative, storytelling and autobiographical fiction. We will read short stories/articles by various authors as well as longer social studies of memory in fiction and storytelling. 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. This is a computer- aided classroom environment. We will write at each class meeting. We will use the computer most every class period. 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
(4) develop proficiency using Microsoft word to prepare essays
English 101E - Introduction to Expository Writing
4 semester hours
Dixon, Mimi
In this course, students will work through the writing process, from planning to revising and editing essays. Our text for the course will be Seeing & Writing 3, which provides visual images and readings that will invite us to think critically about popular culture, everything from images of beauty in advertising, to ethnic stereotypes in film, gender roles on TV and music videos, to cultural icons and heroes. Writing in the course will move from more personal essays to researched arguments. The course will also provide an introduction to using Wittenberg's research resources in the library and on the Internet.
English 180A - Shakespeare on Film
4 semester hours
Dixon, Mimi
Prerequisite: ENGL 101
Movies are the popular entertainment of our era, as Shakespeare’s stage was in his. And the London stage, like Hollywood today, took the blame for every sort of social evil—the corruption of youth, “bawdrie,” godlessness, civil chaos, and the destruction of traditional values. What happens when Shakespeare is reinterpreted for the contemporary public, when the old is made new, Renaissance meets post-modern, when script becomes performance becomes celluloid? This course explores the scripts of Shakespeare through their twentieth-century revision by artists like Lawrence Olivier, Orson Welles, Franco Zefferelli, Peter Brooks, and Kenneth Branagh. We will look at a wide range of performances, from 1930’s Hollywood to Kenneth Branagh, to your own dramatic readings in class. We will read about seven plays (probably Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, Hamlet, Othello, and Twelfth Night), see one or two film productions of each, write several short papers, quizzes and a final exam. You will be required to see a film outside class on Wednesday nights from 6:30 to about 9:00 almost every week.
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 180A - Jane Goes to the Movies
4 credits
Inboden, Robin
Prerequisite: English 101E
Jane Austen would probably be bemused (and amused) were she alive today to see the veritable entertainment empire that has sprung from her novels, which she self-deprecatingly described as “little bit[s] (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, [producing] little effect after much labour." In her metaphor she is a miniaturist, producing tiny portraits—but for over sixty years, her work has filled the big screen, with no signs of stopping any time soon.
In this course we will read the major novels of Jane Austen and view representative film and television adaptations of them. Not only will we learn basic critical skills for reading fiction and viewing film, but we will find that our discussion of the novels will be illuminated by the choices made (and not made) by filmmakers. We will also explore the continuing popularity of Jane Austen and her novels: what does the current boom in Austen adaptations, sequels, prequels, etc. suggest about our own society’s values, desires, and anxieties? We will also examine Austen’s life in various versions, as well as considering other fictions and films related to her work. The graded work of the course will include several analytical papers, a final exam, and possibly quizzes and a creative project. Writing Intensive.
English 180A - Building a Nation: American Immigrant Literature
4 semester hours
Thomas, Shannon
Prerequisite: English 101E
“We are a nation of immigrants.” We encounter this phrase in history textbooks, political speeches, and even sometimes in uplifting inspirational commercials. We often come across it along with the inscription on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free.” These quotes suggest that America’s identity is fundamentally and intricately tied to its immigrants. Yet, Americans have a complex relationship to the idea of immigrants in America. Particular immigrant groups are welcomed into the nation while others are not. Similarly, some immigrants’ histories are privileged while others are unacknowledged or erased. In order to address America’s complicated and often contradictory relationship with immigrants, this course will explore the fullness of immigrant experience in literature: What is an “American?” When does one become “American?” What is lost when one takes on an “American” identity? In the past, why did people immigrate to America? Why do they today? How does America treat recent immigrants? How are immigrants essential to America’s past, present, and future?
We will read literature and history about and by a diverse group of immigrant writers: those who came to America as free immigrants, those who arrived in bondage, and those who were here before European settlers arrived on the Atlantic coast. We will read novels, short stories and fiction from the early 20th century through the 21st century. Potential texts will likely be selected from the following amazing works: Anzia Yezierska’s The Bread Givers, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Dave Eggers’ What is the What, Ana Castillo’s So Far From God, Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban, Toni Morrison’s A Mercy and the short stories and poetry of Hisaye Yamamoto, Helena Maria Viramontes, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Chrystos (there will also be a film or two). The course will likely require 2 essays, a midterm and final exam, and a creative individual or group project.
ENGL 190A/C - Afro-Caribbean Studies: Migratory Subjects
4 semester hours
Wilkerson, Carmiele
Prerequisite: English 101E
This course will introduce students to the literary works and cultural history of English-speaking Caribbean authors. The course will study closely an historical group, “The Windrush Generation,” Caribbean men and women who immigrated to Great Britain in search of better lives for themselves and for their families. The course will ground class lecture in issues of migration and the politics of identity for the Anglophone Caribbean in Great Britain. We will discover the beauty of the works by selected authors as they lead us on the path of discovery into the world of literature, language and culture. This course is designated A (The student should gain an understanding of aesthetic experience and of how the arts enrich and express the human spirit.) and C (The student should gain an understanding of the diversity of non-Western cultures through a study of the history, institutions, or traditions of one or more of these cultures.) Thus, the course will integrate both the aesthetic and socio-historic aspects of the literature and the time period.
Course Goals
By the end of this course, students will have begun to
(1) develop critical thinking and reading skills
(2) develop an understanding of how geography informs identity
(3) gain an understanding and appreciation of the Windrush Generation
(4) locate the geographic region of the Anglophone Caribbean and Great Britain on a World map
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 240 - Beginning Creative Writing
4 semester hours
McClelland, Michael
Prerequisite: English 101
“Writing is easy,” the writer Gene Fowler once said. “All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” Fowler may well have been right, but in this class we’ll try to make it a little easier than that. The course will provide students an introduction to four genres of creative writing-poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction and playwriting. Students will hear what some writers have to say about writing, read and discuss some of what is being written today, keep a journal of their own progress as writers, and workshop the writing of their classmates. Most of all, students will write. You will be expected to produce pieces in all four genres, and do a major revision of a work of your choice.
English 240 - Beginning Creative Writing
4 semester hours
Dixon, Kent
Prerequisite: ENGL 101
This is a beginning creative writing course. It assumes nothing about the student’s previous reading or writing experience. We will take ourselves seriously as writers, however, and build from the rudiments individually, each at his and her own pace, and we’ll do this in four major genres—fiction, poetry, drama, and creative writing nonfiction. By the end of the semester, students will have narrowed the field to one or two genres, turning in their best work, in each genre, for a final portfolio evaluation. The balance of the grade is based on a journal/writer’s notebook, which requires daily work, and on class participation. The mix is about a third of each: works, journal, and participation.
Class format is “workshop,” essentially group critique of student work as well as published work—classic and current. All students will have at least two of their works edited and critiques by the rest of the class. There may be an occasional quiz, and there are exams only rarely. However, there is a list of “expectations,” terminology and techniques, that must be met to get best credit for the course.
English 240 is Writing Intensive. It does not meet the Gen.Ed. Arts requirement. It is prerequisite for all advanced creative writing coursed in the English Department. Pre-requisite for Engl 240 is Engl 101, and Engl 180(or 170 or 190) is strongly recommended. It is not a good first or even second semester freshman course, though experienced writers have by-passed these prerequisites on occasion by permission of the instructor, based on a review of the student’s previous work. Accordingly, it is not recommended for High School Honors students, though exceptions may be made: HS students, see instructor, as per above for Freshmen.
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 242 - Writing Center Theory and Practice
4 semester hours
Mattison, Michael
Prerequisite: ENGL 101 and permission of the instructor
Emphasis on writing processes, interpersonal dynamics, questioning techniques, evaluation of writing-in-progress, and rhetorical theory as it pertains to working one-to-one with writers. This course, designed primarily to prepare writing advisors for the Wittenberg Writing Center, includes a practicum. By permission of instructor only. Writing intensive. Every year.
English 280 - British Survey I
4 semester hours
Dixon, Mimi
Prerequisite: ENGL 170H, 180A or 190A/C
In this course, we will look at the development of English literature from its beginnings in the Middle Ages to the rise of the novel in the eighteenth century. We will read and discuss representative literary texts and ask a series of important questions: how do these texts grow out of their historical and cultural contexts? How do they build upon, speak to one another? How do they define and redefine the roles of writer and reader? What does a growing literary canon have in constructing what it means to be a British subject, a self, a man, a woman? We will explore as well the way genres--epic and romance, tragedy and comedy, prose fiction--emerge, change, disappear, in response to a changing culture and readership. You should come out of this course with a foundational knowledge of important writers, dates, literary styles, genres, and critical terms that you can build on in more advanced courses. The course will include some period exams and a comprehensive final; two or three formal papers and several informal responses to the reading. Writing intensive.
English 290A - American Literary Traditions
4 semester hours
Davis, Robert
Prerequisite: ENGL 170, ENGL 180A or ENGL 190A/C
English 290 takes in a wide sweep of American literature—from Puritan poetry to Transcendental essays, from Gothic short stories to modern novels. The goal of the American Survey, however, is not merely to expose students to the variety of American writing or to cover its historical periods. I’m more interested in helping students think intertextually about literature and understand how American writers play off one another in their books as they re-work and re-imagine the literature of the past.
English 290A - American Literary Traditions: Home / Economics
4 semester hours
Askeland, Lori
Prerequisite: ENGL 170, ENGL 180A or ENGL 190A/C
I know a family--mother, father, and child--that lives and works on an organic farm outside Yellow Springs, in a tent-home called a "yurt," on about $10,000 a year. And these are some of the most joyful and intense people I know. Like Thoreau, who said, "My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there," they, too, want "to live deep and suck all the marrow out of life." My friends are striving to joyfully survive and engage in honorable exchanges with others--and, like Thoreau, with a sense of the real cost of things--in time, in damage to the environment, to human relations, and to their own souls. But Thoreau was a man living alone, as an experiment, for a couple of years--my friends are striving to make this simple life work as a family with a child to raise, in a modern age, with many more "tools" to use, and be used by. ("Man is the tool of his tools," said Thoreau). We're (eventually) going to visit my friends on their farm, maybe even get our hands dirty, and read a lot of stories about houses, families, food, and money. The presence of women and children in a home or a workplace is often a marker of hominess and, in the US, of a certain kind of "domestic ideology"--i.e., a set of ideas about what "work" and "home" are, and how people ought to live their daily lives. It seems so gentle and warm, but recent scholars are asking us to take this ideology more seriously as a weapon of colonization, working in the heart of the family....which is exactly where we'll focus our attention. Coursework will include: midterm, two essays, a final exam. Likely books: Bedford Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1; Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple; Thoreau's Walden; Zitkala-Sa's American Indian Stories; Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence.
English 306 - Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture: 1590's London
4 semester hours
Buckman, Ty
Prerequisite: ENGL 200 & 280
This course focuses on literature, art, and the material conditions of life in the last full decade of Elizabeth's reign in England's great capitol. We will read works by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, Sidney, Donne, Johnson, and a host of less well known writers, study the role of the theater and other popular art forms in this period, explore life "on the ground" in London, and otherwise drink deeply from one of the richest literary decades of all time. A reading journal, three papers, a midterm and final. Writing intensive.
English 307 - Love and War in the Eighteenth Century
4 semester hours
Richards, Cynthia
Prerequisite: English 200 and 280
Out of the 1960s protests of the Vietnam War grew the slogan: “Make love not war,” and the title of this course is clearly intended to invoke that now familiar saying. But in the long eighteenth century, this slogan would have taken a different configuration. It might have read: “war makes love.”
The wars of this time period were largely domestic, internal affairs that threatened not just domestic peace, but also the very configuration of domestic space. The Glorious Revolution, the Jacobite Rebellion, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution each challenged the definition of patriarchal power and the structure of the family. These seismic changes in political space helped to usher in equally revolutionary shifts in domestic space, such as personal choice and personal virtue in the negotiation of love and marriage.
This course will examine this connection between love and war in the eighteenth century. We will read selections from the work of John Dryden, Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Olaudah Equiano, Laurence Stern, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Tom Paine, and Jane Austen.
There will be a midterm and final exam, one shorter paper (4-5 pages) and a longer researched final paper (12 pages.)
English 311 - American Renaissance
4 semester hours
Davis, Robert
Prerequisite: English 200 &290A
This course spans a brief period: from the publication of Ralph Waldo Emerson=s Nature in 1836 to the end of the Civil War. That period, the American Renaissance, produced some of our most extraordinary writers—Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, Whitman, Hawthorne, Melville, and Douglass—although it didn’t seem that way at the time. Charles Dickens had overtaken Sir Walter Scott as the most popular writer on either side of the Atlantic, and American authors were brushed off as trivial and derivative, hardly worth the trouble. AIn the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?@ the journalist Sydney Smith wrote. Emerson steps into this debate with iron-shod boots, insisting on the power of a genuinely American literature based on democratic literary models and nourished by a sense of rebirth or renewal. We’ll witness birth moments many times in the course—in the natural resurrections of Walden and Leaves of Grass, in the rebirth of Jonah from the belly of the whale in Moby-Dick, and in the reawakening of spirit in Frederick Douglass’ slave narrative. But there=s a dark side to this story as well, as there always is. The bloated corpses Aresurrected@ in Poe=s stories, Dickinson=s poems, and literally and horrifically on the battlefields of Antietam and Gettysburg bear witness to another kind of renaissance: the return of the monstrous. This internal tension between hope and terror, resurrection and haunting, gives the literature of the American Renaissance its characteristic shape and power.
ENGL 315 - African Novels: Novels of the African Diaspora
4 semester hours
Wilkerson, Carmiele
Prerequisite: Engl 200
Novels of the African Diaspora will examine several major authors of African ancestry. The course will review the cultural history of the African Diaspora through literature that spans Africa, the Caribbean, England and the United States. We will read several important novels and essays (and a bit of poetry) in this course that introduces students to post-colonial studies in Africana literature. Authors to look forward to reading include: Derek Walcott, W.E.B. Du Bois, Chinua Achebe, Norbese Phillip, Edwidge Danticat, Ama Ata Aidoo and Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie among others.
English 321 - Advanced Feature Writing
4 semester hours
Fallon, D’Arcy
Prerequisite: English 241
This course focuses on long newspaper and magazine features and profiles, as well as other kinds of “literary” and “immersion” reportage. Students will learn crucial skills needed to envision and shape feature stories and they will study and practice different story-telling modes. This course also covers the query letter, conducting research and interviews, analyzing the market, and the editor-writer relationship, among other things. This is a rigorous, writing-intensive course where revision is not only encouraged but expected. Students must send out at least one article to an outside publication.
English 340 - Advanced Creative Fiction
4 semester hours
McClelland, Michael
Prerequisite: ENGL 240
There is only one way to become a superior fiction writer: Write, then read, then go write some more. In this class, we will do plenty of both. Students will continue developing the skills and techniques introduced in Beginning Creative Writing through readings, discussion, workshopping, journal-keeping and lots of writing. Each student will produce three short stories and will do a major revision of one of those pieces. We will discuss publishing trends, story submission, and the realities of life as a creative writer. Our goal will be for each student to write at least one story suitable for submission to a literary journal.
This is a writing intensive course, with prerequisites of English 101 and English 240. It counts as an upper level writing course for both the Writing Minor and the English Major.
English 341 - Advanced Poetry
4 semester hours
Rambo, Jody
Prerequisite: ENGL 240
If poems are, as Jorie Graham writes, “records of true risks taken by the soul of the speaker” then the intent of this advanced writing course in poetry is to create the conditions for taking such risks. The course will be composed of equal parts reading and writing poetry to introduce students to developments in contemporary poetry and to help them develop further their craft. Students will also explore different forms of poetry such as the sonnet, villanelle, and sestina, along with free verse and prose poems. Regular writing workshops, a poet’s notebook, diverse reading assignments, and a final manuscript. Prerequisite: English 240 or instructor’s permission.
English 380 - Madness, the Mind, and the Literary Imagination
4 semester hours
Incorvati, Rick
Prerequisite: Engl 200 and 280
“There is no doubt that this poor man was mad,” wrote Wordsworth about the then little known poet William Blake, “but there is something about the madness of this man that interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott.” Wordsworth’s comment raises questions about what he means by “madness” and how it is that the literary productions of an ostensibly unbalanced mind might prove to be of greater interest than those by writers of a presumably more stable cast. In this class, we’ll take up this question of madness, we’ll examine some 18th and 19th-century theories of how the mind actually works, and we’ll see how such ideas worked their way into the literature of the Romantic and Victorian eras. This investigation will take us through some gothic fiction (early and late), some poetry by the “mad” William Blake and others of his time, and some writing by women who seemed to ascribe a particular kind of madness to their own gender. There will be three exams in the course and at least two papers, one of which will be a 12-15 page literary analysis incorporating your knowledge of some 19th-century psychological theories.
English 403 - Special Projects in Creative Writing
4 semester hours
Dixon, Kent
Prerequisite: Senior status, ENGL 240 and 2 advanced creative writing courses, and Department Permission
Special Projects in Creative Writing offers serious creative writing students an opportunity to produce a significant piece in their chosen genre—fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, or screenwriting. Relying on class workshopping and regular conferences with the professor, students will produce a project of their own design, for example, a novella or section of a novel, a collection of related short stories, or a theme-driven collections of poems or essays. Admission to the course is based on a writing sample and a brief written project proposal. Applications are due in the English department Office by 4 p.m. on Friday, October 23rd. Students will be notified of acceptance during Advising Week.
