Fall 2016 Courses

Undergraduate English Courses
Graduate English Courses
Undergraduate Writing Courses
Graduate Writing Courses

Undergraduate English Courses

ENG 104-001: Introduction to Fiction

Instructor: Katya Amato

FULFILLS ENGLISH MINOR OR BA/BS ARTS & LETTERS REQUIREMENT. DOES NOT APPLY TO ENG MAJOR

Reading fiction is an act of the imagination, one we will undertake this term in contemporary stories by Erdrich, Munro, Lahiri, and Proulx as well as in classics by Kafka, Joyce, Tolstoy, and O'Connor (Flannery and Frank). We'll also read writers on writing and critics on texts, but our primary interest is on reading as an act of the imagination shared by writer and reader and by a community of readers.

We'll read stories and novellas that make us feel and think. ""A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us,"" said Kafka, right about so many things amid the strangeness of our lives. We are interpreters of texts, of the world as text, and learning to read well is essential.

The fictions come from around the world and from different perspectives. We'll consider points of view, settings, narrators and their reliability, characterization, conflict, style, and all the other features that comprise fiction. There will be lectures and group work. Grading will be by submission of a portfolio of informal and formal writing.

The text for the course is The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction (Shorter 8th Edition), edited by Richard Bausch. ISBN 978-0-393-93776-3.

In addition, Lynda Barry's One! Hundred! Demons! is required (ISBN 978-1-57061-459-0).

For further information, feel free to get in touch over the summer: amatok@pdx.edu.

ENG 201-002: Introduction to Shakespeare

Instructor: John Smyth

FULFILLS LOWER DIVISION REQUIREMENT FOR ENG MAJORS

Main Texts:

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, The Sonnets, Troilus and Cressida, The Tempest.
Also Shakespeare: A Theater of Envy (by René Girard)

Films:

A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (Woody Allen & Mia Farrow), The Tempest (with Helen Mirren and Russell Brandt), Hamlet (with David Tennant).

Course Requirements: Two 600-word written commentaries, plus two in-class presentations, and a 1500-word final essay.

ENG 253-001: Survey of American Literature

Instructor: Elisabeth Ceppi

FULFILLS LOWER DIVISION REQUIREMENT FOR ENG MAJORS

This course will survey works of literature written in English from colonial settlement in the Americas through the Civil War. We will focus on questions of genre, form, and authorship and their relationships to the social, political, and intellectual histories of the geographic terrain that has become the United States. We will ask what, if anything, is distinctive about “American” versions of the themes and aesthetics associated with Protestantism, the Enlightenment, and Romanticism. We will also work to develop habits and skills of reading and writing necessary for critical analysis of literature.

REQUIRED TEXT

Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition (Package 1: Vols. A and B)

ENG 260-001: Introduction to Women’s Literature

Instructor: Maria Depriest

FULFILLS LOWER DIVISION REQUIREMENT FOR ENG MAJORS

Introduction to the texts and contents of women’s literature.

ENG 300-001: Introduction to the English Major

Instructor: Maude Hines

FULFILLS GROUP A

What is literature? How have we determined what is "great" literature? Do we need to know "what the author intended"? Is there more than one way to find "meaning" in a story? "Aren't we reading too much into it?" Questions like these will guide us throughout this course, which is designed as an introduction to literary theory. Rather than surveying particular schools or movements, we will focus on central questions and problems. Our primary texts will be ghost stories, from a genre that foregrounds interpretive acts and moves toward revelation of things “hidden.”

This is a Writing-Intensive Course (WIC). For more information on WIC courses at PSU, go to https://www.pdx.edu/english/wic

ENG 300-002: Introduction to the English Major

Instructor: Sarah Lincoln

FULFILLS GROUP A

"There is no document of culture that is not at the same time a document of barbarism."

—Walter Benjamin, 1940

The course provides a rigorous introduction to the methods, approaches and questions necessary for advanced scholarly work in English, including close reading, historicism, research and argument: consider it boot camp for English majors! This is not a survey of theoretical perspectives, though we will read and discuss some important examples of literary theory along the way. Rather, the class prepares you for upper-division scholarship by asking what it is that we “do” as readers and critics—what English is “for,” why literature matters, and how encounters with the strangeness of literary language reflect and model other sorts of strange encounters. A careful reading of J.M. Coetzee’s 1980 novel Waiting for the Barbarians serves as a basis for our broader consideration of the ethical and political significance of reading, interpretation, and translation; we will also put the novel in dialogue with other works of literature, including Camus’s “The Guest”; Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden; Kafka’s In the Penal Colony; DH Lawrence, “Snake”; and Cavafy’s “Waiting for the Barbarians""; along with theoretical perspectives from Derek Attridge, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault and others. As a Writing Intensive Class (WIC), the course will also focus on the strategies, conventions and techniques of scholarly writing. Reading and responding to other students’ work; drafting, revising and polishing written assignments in response to feedback; and improving grammar, style, clarity and argument will all form part of your work in the class.

Required Texts

J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (Penguin Ink)
Ariel Dorfman, Death and the Maiden (Penguin)
The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 7th Edition (MLA)

ENG 300-004: Introduction to the English Major

Instructor: Josh Epstein

FULFILLS GROUP A

This course introduces students to the methods and critical concepts for reading, analyzing, and writing critically about English literature. We start from the premise that there's something more to the academic study of literature than talking about "how it makes you feel," that there's something more than "my personal opinion" at stake—a myth propounded by contemptible movies such as Dead Poets Society, which commits the dual sin of getting its subject wrong and indulging the comforting myths of its audience. One of the most important lessons of literature is that not everything is all about us, all of the time: the real joys of literature (and difficulties—those can be joyful too!) lie in how it forces us to engage with strangeness, unfamiliarity, complexity, and Otherness by dislocating what is comfortable and familiar.

This course, therefore, aims to provide students with a rigorous and robust set of tools for understanding literature in its full aesthetic, historical, cultural, and theoretical richness. We will develop a critical apparatus of terms and concepts for asking sophisticated questions about the literary text and investigating these questions in depth. ENG 300 thus prepares students for more advanced study in the discipline, and for taking deep and meaningful pleasure—not shallow and solipsistic pleasure—in the rich and strange complexities of literary interpretation.

ENG 301U-002: Topics: Shakespeare: Shakespeare's Comedies

Instructor: Amy Greenstadt

FULFILLS GROUP C ( PRE-1800 ) OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR INTERPRETING THE PAST CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

We will read six of Shakespeare’s comedies paying close attention to both language and cultural/historical context. We will be particularly engaged with the following questions: (1) what distinguishes comedy from tragedy? Is this a useful opposition? (2) in a society based on strict political and social hierarchies reinforced through public rituals, does comic theater count as such a ritual space? (3) what makes comedy funny? What types of wordplay and plot devices does Shakespeare use to invite both pleasure and laughter, and do these different techniques ever come into conflict with each other? (4) why do so many of the comedies involve cross-dressing? How do Shakespeare’s plays approach issues of gender identity and sexuality, especially given the fact that in his time only men were allowed to perform onstage? (5) do Shakespeare’s comedies tend to resolve or amplify the tensions in the social fabric of Renaissance England ? Is comedy an essentially progressive or conservative form – both, or neither? (6) what role do Shakespeare’s comedies play in modern culture? How have the plays been adapted to speak to today’s audiences?

Some knowledge of Shakespeare and/or Renaissance literature, as well as basic conventions of English studies, expected, though not required.

ENG 304-001: Critical Theory of Cinema

Instructor: Wendy Collins

FULFILLS GROUP A UNDER 2010 CATALOG YEAR, OTHERWISE FUILFILLS GROUP E

Outlines the central elements of cinema criticism, including interpretive theories and approaches. Begins with an outline of critical approaches, including critical history. Moves to contemporary criticism, including feminist, structuralist, sociological, and psychoanalytic analyses. Includes discussion of film as a cultural commodity.

ENG 305U-003: Topics in Film: Utopia and Dystopia In Film

Instructor: William Bohnaker

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR POP CULTURE CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

When writers, filmmakers, and theorists imagine the society of the future, they are actually judging the world of the present and how it seems destined to evolve in the future. Increasingly in the modern era the representations of society, factual or fictional, are more critical than congratulatory, portrayed not only as utopias but as dystopias. Student will examine selected examples of these works, literary and cinematic, not only to understand their critique of society and culture but also to discern possibilities for social change.

ENG 305U-001: Topics in Film: Hitchcock

Instructor: Michael Clark

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR POP CULTURE CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

Study of film as text, including auteur, formalist, historical, and cultural perspectives. Course may be repeated for credit with different topics.

ENG 306U-001: Topics in Literature and Popular Culture: Empire in the Popular Imagination

Instructor: Tracy Dillon

FULFILLS GROUP E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR POP CULTURE CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

Study of literary issues in popular culture. Courses taught under this number may examine literature as a popular form (such as detective or romance fiction) and the relationship between literature and popular genres (such as comics or music), or use techniques of literary/textual analysis to analyze forms of popular culture (blogs, music videos, etc.). Course may be repeated for credit with different topics.

ENG 306U-002: Topics in Literature and Popular Culture: Fantasy World-Building

Instructor: Katya Amato

FULFILLS GROUP E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR POP CULTURE CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

Fantasy appears in the canon of world literature from the beginning, but it was one fictional element among many and was interpreted mythically, allegorically, theologically, or symbolically. Fantasy was not a genre in itself. It turns satirical in the eighteenth century, and in the nineteenth century becomes central to a new literature for children, also gaining prominence in adult literature. But the paradigmatic fantasy is The Lord of the Rings, written in the twentieth century by Tolkien, who turns fantasy into an important publishing category, leading to thousands of genre publications. Fantasy also continues to suffuse the canon itself--major authors like Calvino, Garcia Marquez, Morrison, and Rushdie all have worked with fantasy.

The literature we read in this course is all popular fantasy. Ursula Le Guin revisions the world in her Earthsea series, influenced by the Tao Te Ching, which she translated in 1997. Following Ged and Tenar from childhood to maturity, we grow with the characters, developing our understanding of the interconnectedness of the world while soaring with dragons "farther west than west." Philip Pullman takes us to many worlds in his trilogy that is intertextual with the Bible, Dante, Blake, and Milton; we follow Lyra and Will to maturity amid daemons, armored bears, and Lapland witches wearing black silk and riding branches of cloud-pine. Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys follows the sons of the West African spider god who figured in American Gods. Our last novel is by China Mieville, whose Perdido Street Station is filled with exotic creatures who surprise us into feeling as we explore the alienating, filthy, polluted city of New Crobuzon.

Required texts:

A Wizard of Earthsea by Le Guin
The Tombs of Atuan by Le Guin
The Farthest Shore by Le Guin
Tehanu by Le Guin
The Other Wind by Le Guin
Tales from Earthsea by Le Guin
The Golden Compass (also called Northern Lights) by Pullman (Book 1 of the trilogy His Dark Materials)
Anansi Boys by Gaiman
Perdido Street Station by Mieville

Requirements include regular attendance and varied writing assignments. For further information, feel free to get in touch over the summer.

ENG 318U-001: The Bible as Literature

Instructor: William Knight

FULFILLS GROUP C (PRE-1800) UNDER 2010 CATALOG YEAR, OTHERWISE FULFILLS GROUP E FOR ENG MAJORS OR INTERPRETING THE PAST CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

A study of the various kinds of literature contained in the Bible. An analysis of the ways in which the Biblical expression reflects the cultural and historical milieu of the Hebraic-Christian experience.

ENG 320U-001: The English Novel

Instructor: John Smyth

FULFILLS GROUP C (PRE-1800) OR E FOR ENG MAJORS OR INTERPRETING THE PAST CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

MAIN TEXTS AND FILMS

Fielding, Shamela
Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
Winterbottom, A Cock and Bull Story (film)
Greenaway, The Draughtsman’s Contract (film)
Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist
O’Brien, The Third Policeman
Gogol, “The Nose”

In the first half of the term we study the eighteenth-century English novel: first, briefly, via Henry Fielding’s Shamela – a parody of Samuel Richardson’s best-selling novel of seduction titled Pamela – and then via what is perhaps its most massively influential achievement, Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Romantics like Friedrich Schlegel regarded this text as emblematic of modern literature as a whole; the Russian literary theorist Victor Shklovsky called it “the most typical novel in world literature;” and the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche remarkably called Sterne “the freest spirit of this or any age.”

We will also study Peter Greenaway’s film The Draughtsman’s Contract, a work set in the late seventeenth century that has many overlaps, both historical and otherwise, with Sterne’s novel. Themes will include women’s liberation, politics, philosophy, sexuality, religion, and theory of art.

The second half of term will be mainly devoted to two novels directly influenced by Sterne: Denis Diderot’s eighteenth-century Jacques the Fatalist - perhaps the most acute “critical reading” of Tristram Shandy ever produced – and Flann O’Brien’s twentieth-century The Third Policeman. We will also read Nikolai Gogol’s famous nineteenth-century story “The Nose” – itself spawned by the novelistic tradition coming out of Tristram Shandy – and which Dostoyevsky used as model for his novel The Double.

Main requirements: Two essays and an in-class presentation.

ENG 325U-001: Postcolonial Literature

Instructor: Bishupal Limbu

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

This course will introduce students to the rich and diverse literature of the non-Western world, particularly the areas that were formerly colonies of European countries. We will examine novels, poems, essays, and film that address questions of power, domination, violence, and resistance. How do writers and artists portray the experience of subjugated peoples and their struggle against injustice? How does one reverse structures of inequality and refashion the world from the perspective of the oppressed? What is the relationship between literature (broadly conceived) and politics? These questions will guide our discussions and allow us to connect a varied selection of texts from different parts of the world.

Texts for the course have not yet been finalized but we will probably read the following four novels:

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (ISBN: 978-0385474542)
Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga (ISBN: 978-0954702335)
The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon (ISBN: 978-0582642645)
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid (ISBN: 978-1594632334)

ENG 330U-001: Jewish and Israeli Literature

Instructor: Michael Weingrad

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENG MAJORS OR GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES OR POP CULTURE CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

This course looks at the Jewish encounter with modernity through literature. The focus will be on literature produced in Hebrew and Yiddish by East European Jews in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period of great upheaval reflected in the emerging modern Hebrew and Yiddish literatures of the time. We will read works by such classic modern Jewish authors as Sholem Aleichem, S. Y. Agnon, and H. N. Bialik. In the second half of the course we will sample literature produced after the 1930s, including Israeli literature and literature produced outside of Eastern Europe.

ENG 331U-001: Introduction to Rhetoric and Composition Studies

Instructor: Daniel DeWeese

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E OF ENG MAJOR OR AMERICAN IDENTITIES CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

Introduction to Rhetoric and Composition Studies offers students an opportunity to discuss contemporary issues in writing instruction, persuasion in a multimedia world, and the interplay of traditional and visual literacies. The course touches upon the rhetorical tradition of Greece, the rise of “process-oriented” writing instruction in American universities, and visual elements of rhetoric that began with professional typography and now extend into film, television, and the Internet. In addition to a variety of texts covering rhetoric and composition and the teaching of writing, we will also look at Ellen Lupton’s Thinking with Type and John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. Although history provides the course’s structure, the focus is on such perennial issues as the relationship of writing to speech and reading, the teaching of writing (and the role of audience in composing), the relationship between writing and “the self,” and the political implications bound up in differing representations of thought and methods of argument.

Required texts:

On Rhetoric, Aristotle, translated by George A. Kennedy (Oxford)
Ways of Seeing, John Berger (Penguin)
Thinking with Type, Ellen Lupton (Princeton Architectural Press)
Gorgias, Plato, translated by Robin Waterfield (Oxford)

ENG 341U: The Life of Love in English Renaissance Culture

Instructor: Jonathan Walker

FULFILLS THE GROUP C PRE-1800 REQUIREMENT FOR ENGLISH MAJORS AND THE INTERPRETING THE PAST CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

Love is, as we know, a many splendored thing. But it is also a very complicated, irrational, and often painful affair. As the cultural critic Laura Kipnis has put it (and not a little acerbically): “Saying no to love isn’t simply heresy; it is tragedy—the failure to achieve what is most essentially human. So deeply internalized is our obedience to this most capricious despot [of love] that artists create passionate odes to its cruelty, and audiences seem never to tire of the most deeply unoriginal mass spectacles devoted to rehearsing the litany of its torments, fixating their very beings on the narrowest glimmer of its fleeting satisfactions.” It was no less so during the Renaissance.

In this course, we will read primarily early modern English poetry along with one dramatic text, all of which centers on the subject of love. Yet because love usually encompasses so many other issues—attraction, rejection, desire, beauty, sex, gender, social roles, marriage—our readings will touch upon a wide range of themes, many of which overlap. The course will not be comprehensive in its coverage, but we will address questions of desire, the body, eroticism, clothing, seduction, and leave-taking within four broad units. In addition, we will occasionally read non-literary texts, such as a religious homily, essays, and even legislation, which will help us to orient ourselves within the culture and to understand both the similarities and differences between early modern English and contemporary American notions of that crazy little thing called love.

Finally, this class will be discussion-based. There will be very few lectures. Participation is key, so I will expect you to have read the poetry several times for each day, to have ideas and questions about the readings, and to be prepared to discuss the material during our class time.

ENG 342U-001: Restoration and Eighteenth Century Literature

Instructor: William Knight

FULFILLS GROUP C (PRE-1800) OR E FOR ENG MAJORS OR INTERPRETING THE PAST CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

This course will survey the writing of the British Enlightenment by confronting the cultural issues that grew in writing to seem dangerous, threatening, or transgressive over the period, particularly in the life of London and other cities. Rather than the official or state-recognized transgressions, though, we’ll look at those problems that seem to have risen to consciousness through the writing of “private" individual commentators. The transgressive or dangerous aspects of British life we’ll look at include religious zealotry, substance abuse, uncontrolled or mercenary sexuality, pornography, the excesses of luxury and wealth, extreme poverty or filth, and the policies of a growing empire (including slavery, war, class conflict, and public corruption). And vampires! We’ll focus not so much on public policy as on aesthetics: our aim will be to think about how these social dangers produce, enable, or encourage writing in an array of modes and genres.

In addition to shorter works or excerpts from Shaftesbury, Swift, Pope, Haywood, Cleland, Wordsworth, and Wollstonecraft (as well as excerpts from modern criticism and theory) we’ll also examine:

Beckford, William. Vathek. Oxford. ISBN: 978-0199576951
Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. ISBN: 978-0199539024
Gay, John. The Beggar’s Opera. Penguin. ISBN: 978-0140432206
Hogarth, William. Engravings. Dover Books. ISBN: 978-0486224794
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Oxford. ISBN: 978-1516929771

ENG 343U-001: Romanticism

Instructor: Alastair Hunt

FULFILLS GROUP C (PRE-1800) OR E FOR ENG MAJORS OR INTERPRETING THE PAST CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

This course introduces students to the greatest hits and one-hit wonders of British Romanticism. Romanticism is traditionally understood as a broad movement that predominated the literature of Great Britain in the years between 1789 and 1832. Its key authors are six white Englishmen who invented a new kind of literature to express distinctly modern experiences of the world of Nature and of the interior depths of the Self. Much of this course will be spent getting to grips with this traditional conception of Romanticism, as displayed in the work of the Big Six, and by the end you will, at a minimum, you will be familiar with some pretty cool poetry.

However, we will also approach the more capacious, nuanced, and at times difficult understanding of Romanticism revealed by recent literary critical research. For it turns out that the Romantic archive includes works by women, working-class, and non-white authors as well as works from non-poetic genres, such as novels, autobiography, essays. And Romanticism engages a greater range of questions and issues than previously thought, including political revolution, human rights, ecology, gender, slavery, the nation, identity, and the nature of language and of lived reality itself.

Ultimately, then, this course is not just a survey of Romanticism, but also an exploration of how Romantic literary texts, as literary texts, make claims on us to think—and re-think—our common-sense explanations and expectations of the world. By the end of the course, you will not only have a better appreciation of your cultural genealogy; you will also be estranged from the obviousness of the present. In the dark times in which we live, this is far from insignificant.

Required Texts

Peter Manning and Susan Wolfson, eds. The Longman Anthology of British Literature: Vol 2A: The Romantics and Their Contemporaries. 5th ed. New York: Pearson, 2011.
Mary Shelley. Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. Ed. Susan Wolfson. Longman Cultural Edition. New York: Pearson, 2007.

ENG 344U-001: Victorian Literature

Instructor: Lorraine Mercer

FULFILLS GROUP C OR E FOR ENG MAJORS OR INTERPRETING THE PAST CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

Selected works of Victorian literature; introduction to themes, genres, history and culture of the Victorian Era.

ENG 351U-002: African American Literature

Instructor: Anoop Mirpuri

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR AMERICAN IDENTITIES CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

This course is the first in a three-part survey of the field of African American literature. It will cover a broad selection of literature written by, and about, people of African descent in the Americas during the formation of the U.S. nation-state and the era of slavery and abolition. The course will focus on the emergence of the black literary tradition in the context of the transatlantic slave trade, plantation slavery, and the conquest and colonization of the so-called “new world” by Europe and Euro-Americans who came to understand themselves as “white.”

We will read as a way of exploring both the black literary tradition and the black experience in the U.S. What does it mean to rethink U.S. history and culture from a black perspective--in other words, to read the black perspective as the history of Western Civilization?

At the same time, the course will challenge the idea that there is such a thing as an essential black experience that we can somehow come to know through study. We will thus read these texts as literary texts rather than as transparent representations of a black experience.

ENG 367U-001: American Literature and Culture

Instructor: Michael Weingrad

FULFILLS GROUP B, C OR E FOR ENG MAJORS OR AMERICAN IDENTITIES OR POP CULTURE CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

In this course we will look at Jewish experience in the United States through novels, memoirs, documentary film, video and music clips, and historical and sociological studies. We will focus on four topics: 1) the immigration experience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; 2) the process of Americanization among the immigrant generation and their children, mainly looking at the first half of the twentieth century; 3) the political identities of American Jews, mainly looking at the second half of the twentieth century; and 4) the relationship of American Jews to Israel, mainly looking at the last three decades. The course will not provide a comprehensive survey of Jewish American literature, but rather a set of four portraits that frame useful questions about both Jewish and American identities.

ENG 372U-002: Topics in Literature, Gender, and Sexuality: Native American Women Writers

Instructor: Maria Depriest

FULFILLS GROUP B, C OR E FOR ENG MAJORS OR GENDER & SEXUALITIES STUDIES CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

Study of representations of gender and sexuality in literature and related cultural forms. May be repeated for credit with different topics. This is the same course as WS 372 and may be taken only once for credit.

ENG 372U-001: Topics in Literature, Gender, and Sexuality

Instructor: John Smyth

We will investigate “the facts” about gender and sexuality by reading some famous fictions (and watching two films) on the subject, beginning with Balzac’s story about a sculptor who falls in love with a castrato, and Neil Jordan’s film about a soldier who falls in love with a transvestite. In addition, Dostoyevsky gives us a celebrated story about a man who has a relation with a prostitute; Nabokov a notorious novel about a pedophile; Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) a novella about a woman who reverses Kierkegaard’s chauvinist “Diary of a Seducer;” and Stendhal (Henri Beyle) a novel famous for its amorous and erotic psychology. We will also read theoretical works on gender and sexuality as background, and watch Greenaway’s film about women’s revenge on men in the late 17th century.

FULFILLS GROUP B, C OR E FOR ENG MAJORS OR GENDER & SEXUALITIES STUDIES CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

MAIN TEXTS:

Roland Barthes, S/Z (includes Balzac’s “Sarrasine”)
Stendhal, Red and Black
Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Isak Dinesen, Ehrengard and “The Blank Page”

SECONDARY TEXTS:

Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography
Ivan Illich, Gender
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (Volume I)
René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (The Romantic Lie and the Novelistic Truth)

FILM:

Peter Greenaway, The Draughtsman’s Contract
Neil Jordan, The Crying Game

MAIN REQUIREMENTS:

Two essays and an in-class presentation.

ENG 373-001: Topics in Literature, Race, and Ethnicity: Arab-American Literature

Instructor: Diana Abu-Jaber

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Study of representations of racial and ethnic identity in literature and related cultural forms. May be repeated for credit with different topics.

ENG 384-002: Contemporary Literature: Object Lessons: The Material of Contemporary Literature

Instructor: Joshua Epstein

FULFILLS GROUP B, C OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

ENG 384, a study of Anglophone (global English) literature from the last quarter-century, will emphasize the close and careful reading of form, surveying a range of innovative approaches to voice, structure, genre, and metafictional reflection. Our course will be loosely unified under the umbrella term "material culture" which groups together a range of concerns: the artistic, ideological, and emotional value of everyday "things," objects, and consumer goods; political and economic structures that produce these objects (capitalism, globalization, consumer culture, etc.); categories that inform our thinking about material goods ("real"/"artificial," "authentic"/"fake," "original"/"reproduction," etc.); and the status of the book itself as material object.

With these issues in mind, we will examine some of the recurring contradictions of postmodern writing: a global media landscape defined by both fragmentation and corporate uniformity; unstable, yet persistent, constructions of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation; the uneasy relationships among terrorism, surveillance, state power, and state violence; the alternating subjective (and readerly) experiences of immersion and alienation, interruption and flow; the perseverance of myth and its local and global rewritings; the blurring boundaries between literature and criticism, text and context; and the ever-tense, ever-productive relationship between "high art" and popular culture.

Assignments will include weekly Canvas responses, midterm and final exam, and a final "Object Lessons" project (modeled on Alison Kinney's book HOOD), in which students research and analyze the representation and cultural significance of a material object in one or more of our texts.

Texts, still in flux, will be chosen from the following:

Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (2014).
Alison Kinney, Hood (2014).
Marie Jones, Stones in His Pockets (1996)
Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red (1998)
Teju Cole, Open City (2011).
Jonathan Coe, Expo 58 (2014).
Aaron A. Reed, 18 Cadence: http://18cadence.textories.com/

ENG 387U-001: Women’s Literature

Instructor: Hildy Miller

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENG MAJORS OR GENDER & SEXUALITIES STUDIES CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

In this course we’ll read a variety of pieces of literature by women, including essays, short stories, drama, novels, and poetry from the 20th and 21st centuries. Though the main focus will be on British and American writers, we’ll also include writers from other geographically diverse contexts. Our goal will be to sample—and enjoy—writings from Edith Wharton to Sandra Cisneros, to consider their historical, intellectual, and aesthetic significance, their connection to other literary movements and canons, and the intersections of gender with race, class, gender, sexuality, and culture. We’ll try to define for ourselves what this tradition-that’s-not-really-a-tradition is.

ENG 399-0DH: Special Studies: Introduction to Digital Humanities

Instructor: Kathi Inman Berens

FULFILLS GROUP E FOR ENG MAJORS

Do computers offer new tools for understanding the human condition? Digital tools for archiving and sorting information are remarkable, but not neutral. They express ideologies of power and control. We’ll examine how archives and databases construct knowledge and knowledge communities. Many early-Web Digital Humanities projects began as efforts by marginalized communities to create their own accessible knowledge repositories. This impetus is alive in work by feminist, anti-racist, and postcolonial digital humanists working today. We’ll also work with two other key DH principles: “distant reading,” which uses datasets to “read” literary artworks, and “exploratory programming,” in which we’ll write computer programs to make digital art. No programming experience necessary! The class is designed for people who haven’t worked with code or software.

ENG 407H-001: Seminar: Postcolonial Ecology

Instructor: Sarah Lincoln

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Despite the longstanding interest of writers, poets and filmmakers from postcolonial sites in ecological and environmental issues, critics in these fields (postcolonialism and ecocriticism) have only recently begun talking to each other. We will make our own contributions to this conversation by reading, discussing and critically responding to a range of literary works from these “underdeveloped” or otherwise peripheral regions of the world, works that specifically address questions of sustainability, waste, human interactions with their environment, and the lives of animals in a postcolonial context. We will begin by considering the relationship between colonialism and nature, empire and the environment, before turning to some literary and non-fictional responses to three postcolonial ecological disasters: the gas leak at Bhopal, India in 1984; the ongoing devastation of the oil-producing regions of the Niger Delta; and the effects of global climate change on the peoples of the “third world.” These events cast light on the limits and consequences of unrestrained “development,” helping us think further about the ecological effects of “globalization,” “modernization” and other progress narratives. The remainder of the term will be taken up with works that explore alternative ways of living, doing and being in the world, from “Creole” ecologies, human-animal hybridity, “affirmative precarity,” recycling, and sustainable gardening.

Required texts:

JM Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K. (978-0140074482)
Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide (061871166X)
Helon Habila, Oil on Water (978-0393339642)
Jamaica Kincaid, My Garden (Book) (978-0374527761)
Indra Sinha, Animal’s People (978-1416578796)
Shani Mootoo, Cereus Blooms at Night (978-0802144621)

ENG 413-001: Teaching and Tutoring Writing

Instructor: Hildy Miller

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

This course introduces you to the theory and practice of teaching and tutoring writing in a variety of contexts, whether teaching your own writing course or tutoring in a writing center. We’ll focus on writing processes (invention, revision, editing, formal and informal writing, and writing groups); teaching strategies (responding to writing, developing your teaching ethos, working with ESL students, handling plagiarism, teaching critical reading, and developing a teaching philosophy); and look specifically at what you need to know about tutoring and teaching (how tutorial sessions work, what writing in the disciplines means, how to create such teaching staples as a writing assignment, a unit plan, and a lesson plan). And you’ll spend at least 3 hours a week in a practicum of your choice beginning the third week. So, in short, this won’t be your average lecture class. Instead, you’ll be reading and researching materials, working in small groups, doing practice teaching and tutoring sessions, producing formal and applying all you’re learning to your practicum. At the end of the course you should possess both the tools and the confidence to teach writing in any context.

Preparation for GTEP program.

ENG 447-002: Major Forces in Literature: Harlem Renaissance

Instructor: Maude Hines

FULFILLS GROUP B, C OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

This course will look at the photography, performance, art, music, politics, and above all literature of this important cultural movement. While the graduate section of the course shares a syllabus and some assignments with the undergraduate component, the two sections will be evaluated differently. Undergraduate evaluation will be geared toward breadth of knowledge about the Harlem Renaissance, while graduate students will pursue individual interests in depth. Except for the informal response papers, the graduate work in this class will build toward one final product: from initial research (the annotated bibliography) to public exchange of ideas (the presentation) to early organization of an argument (the précis) to completion (the term paper).

ENG 448-001: Major Figures in Literature: Chaucer

Instructor: Christine Rose

FULFILLS GROUP C (PRE-1800) OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

This course considers the major early poems of Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde, The House of Fame, The Parlement of Foules, and The Book of the Dutchess. A knowledge of Middle English or of Canterbury Tales is not a prerequisite, and ME will be learned as the course proceeds, usually presenting as many charms as challenges. The Chaucer of the early poems is steeped in the courtly French poetic tradition, uses the dream-vision genre extensively, explores Boethian problems and the function of art, and experiments (as usual) with the limits of his genres and themes. The Troilus is Chaucer’s masterpiece. In the Troilus he has fashioned a powerful, paradoxical, erotic, doomed love story, whose “consolation” at the end you may find hardly consoling.

Required readings include contexts and criticism. Quizzes, short papers, class report, final. Emphasis on close reading and class discussion, reading aloud in Middle English. Students will explore some of the history of the critical conversation about the poems.

***This class may be used for the Medieval Studies minor (see History Dept. website for details).

Required Texts:

(undergrads) Barney, Stephen, ed. Troilus and Criseyde (Norton Critical Edition Pbk 2006 – ISBN: 0393927555
(undergrads) Lynch, K. ed. Dream Visions and Other Poems by Geoffrey Chaucer (Norton Critical Edition Pbk – 2006 ISBN: 0393 92588 9)
(all) Boethius , The Consolation of Philosophy, (Lib. of Liberal Arts ISBN: 002346450)
Riverside Chaucer (3rd ed. Benson) ISBN-10: 0199552096 (older ed. OK) ---recommended textbook for grads. instead of Barney and Lynch
Optional: Gordon, ed. The Story of Troilus (Toronto) ISBN: 0802063683
Mann and Boitano, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer ISBN: 0521894670

ENG 448-003: Major Figures in Literature: Phillip K. Dick

Instructor: Tony Wolk

FULFILLS GROUP E FOR ENG MAJORS

Concentrated study of the canon of one or more major writers: for example, Chaucer, The Brontes, James Joyce, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Also offered for graduate-level credit as Eng 548.

ENG 449-001: Comics Theory and History

Instructor: Susan Kirtley

Comics, graphic novels, comic strips, cartoons. There are many terms for them, but they are all names for innovative storytelling done through some combination of words and images. While picture-images date as far back as the Egyptian tombs, or the caves of Lascaux, our course will consider the development of the modern comic in twentieth- and twenty-first- century America. This course will focus on comics theory, understanding and applying theory to primary texts.

ENG 460-001: Advanced Topics in American Literature to 1800

Instructor: Elisabeth Ceppi

FULFILLS GROUP C (PRE-1800) OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

This course considers “Enlightenment” both as a contested political, philosophical, and ideological concept and as a period of American literary cultural history covering roughly the last half of the eighteenth century. Focusing on the texts of the Revolutionary and Early National periods, we will examine cultural representations of America and the rhetorical making of revolution, nation and “We the People.” We will survey some of the dominant genres of the period: political tracts, natural history, memoir, drama, and sentimental and gothic novels, and we will read these primary materials alongside critical theory, historiography, and literary criticism. The guiding issues of the course will be some of the guiding issues of 18th c. American culture: republican print culture; liberalism and self-making; the conflict between ideals of freedom and practices of slavery; the gender, race, and class coding of reason, sentiment, and virtue. Contrary to the description in the Bulletin, students are not expected to have taken ENG 360 as preparation for the course.

Required Texts will include:

Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano (Dover ISBN 048640661X)
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (Dover ISBN 04862900735)
Hannah Webster Foster, The Coquette (Oxford ISBN 0195042395)
Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland (Penguin ISBN 0140390790)
Thomas Paine, Common Sense (Dover ISBN 0486296024)

ENG 464-001: Race & Modernism

Instructor: Anoop Mirpuri

FULFILLS GROUP C OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

This course is a study of the literature and culture of modernism. We will examine literary and cultural texts and movements in the United States, but will situate them in relation to aesthetic and political developments globally.

First, we will attempt to read these texts in relation to currents and transformations in early 20th century U.S. and global history: an era that saw two major world wars; the great depression; large-scale intranational and international migrations; the rise of fascism; extreme forms of racism and nativism; the development of “global cities” such as New York and Paris; the rise of working class radicalism and socialist movements in the U.S. and Europe; and the emergence of anti-imperialist movements throughout the world.

Required texts TBD, but will likely include writings by Gertrude Stein, W.E.B. Du Bois, Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Sigmund Freud, Alain Locke, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Djuna Barnes.

ENG 469-001: Advanced Topics in Asian-American Literature and Culture

Instructor: Marie Lo

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Readings in Asian-American literature and culture in generational, national, international, and gendered contexts. Topics will include gender and sexuality in Asian-American literature and film; transnational Asian-American narrative; Asian North American literature. Also offered for graduate-level credit as Eng 569.

ENG 491-003: History of Literary Criticism and Theory I

Instructor: Bishupal Limbu

FULFILLS GROUP A OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Examines the history of Western critical approaches to language and literature from ancient traditions through the Enlightenment. Also offered for graduate-level credit as Eng 591 and may be taken only once for credit.

ENG 494-001: Topics in Critical Theory and Methods: Queer Theory

Instructor: Sarah Ensor

FULFILLS GROUP A OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

A course in critical theories and techniques, to complement offerings in literary history and textual analysis. This course will focus on the critical or methodological topic selected by the instructor. Recommended for advanced students in literature and theory. Recommended: 12 credits in literature. Course may be repeated for credit with different topics. Also offered for graduate-level credit as Eng 594.

Graduate English Courses

ENG 500-003: Problems and Methods of Literary Study

Instructor: Jonathan Walker

Bibliography and the methods of literary study as an introduction to graduate work: three hours lecture and at least two additional hours of library research. Required for M.A. candidates in English.

ENG 500-001: Problems and Methods of Literary Study

Instructor: Alastair Hunt

This course is a general introduction to advanced, graduate-level scholarship in English studies. We will spend time learning about scholarly methods of critical archival research. We will also develop your existing skills in the practice that, through all the recent transformations in the field, somehow remains central to literary studies: close reading. In addition we will carry out a brief survey of some advanced theoretical sources developed by critics over the last 50 years. We will also work on your ability to produce literary critical essays that marshal textual, historical, and theoretical evidence to argue a thesis.

This is a lot to cover in just ten weeks, and our course of study necessarily will be selective, but by the end of the term you will understand what the critical study of literature, rhetoric, and culture involves. In fact, you will spend the entire term learning about critical scholarship by practicing it. This course gives you the chance to spend considerable time doing what critics do: participating in focused discussions of literary, critical, and theoretical texts, delivering prepared presentations of your research, and writing literary critical research essays.

Readings will likely include: Jane Gallop, Giorgio Agamben, J.L. Austin, Barbara Johnson. Paul de Man, Michael Warner, Judith Butler, Lee Edleman.

ENG 507-003: Seminar: Forms of the Novel

Instructor: Lorraine Mercer

The Novel~~‘this most pliable of all forms.’ Virginia Woolf

What is a novel?

Terry Eagleton asks this in his book, The English Novel. He gives a dictionary definition that a novel is “a piece of prose fiction of a reasonable length” but goes on to say that even a statement, “as toothless as this, however, is still too restricted.” He continues:

The truth is that a novel is a genre which resists exact definition. This in itself is not particularly striking. The point about the novel, however, is not just that it eludes definitions, but that it actively undermines them. It is less a genre than an anti-genre.

This course includes British and American novels from the mid 19th century to the late 20th century and possibly beyond. We will focus on narrative forms, structures, strategies, literary and historical movements and more.

The Reading List is still in progress but some likely primary texts may include:

C. Bronte, Jane Eyre
Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd
Forster, Howard’s End
Cather, My Antonia
Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!
Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
Morrison, Sula

Requirements will include weekly writing, presentations, leading class discussion and a final essay.

ENG 513-001: Teaching and Tutoring Writing

Instructor: Hildy Miller

Preparation for GTEP program.

ENG 518-002: College Composition Teaching

Instructor: Susan Kirtley

Introduces and develops the theoretical and practical expertise of the graduate teaching assistant in the area of college composition teaching. May be taken up to three times for credit.

ENG 519-002: Advanced College Composition Teaching

Instructor: Susan Kirtley

Continues the development of the theoretical and practical expertise of the graduate teaching assistant in advanced areas of college composition teaching. May be repeated up to three times for credit. Required prerequisite: appointment to 2nd year teaching assistantship in English Department.

ENG 531-001: Topics in English Studies

Instructor: Bishupal Limbu

Examines various theories, history, scholarship, pedagogy, and professional development in the field of English Studies. Topics always differ each term. May be repeated for up to six credits.

ENG 531-004: Topics in English Studies

Instructor: Bishupal Limbu

Examines various theories, history, scholarship, pedagogy, and professional development in the field of English Studies. Topics always differ each term. May be repeated for up to six credits.

ENG 547-001: Major Forces in Literature: Harlem Renaissance

Instructor: Maude Hines

ENG 548-001: Major Figures in Literature: Chaucer

Instructor: Christine Rose

***This class fulfills the graduate Pre-1800 literature requirement.

Required Texts:

(undergrads) Barney, Stephen, ed. Troilus and Criseyde (Norton Critical Edition Pbk 2006 – ISBN: 0393927555
(undergrads) Lynch, K. ed. Dream Visions and Other Poems by Geoffrey Chaucer (Norton Critical Edition Pbk – 2006 ISBN: 0393 92588 9)
(all) Boethius , The Consolation of Philosophy, (Lib. of Liberal Arts ISBN: 002346450)
Riverside Chaucer (3rd ed. Benson) ISBN-10: 0199552096 (older ed. OK) ---recommended textbook for grads. instead of Barney and Lynch
Optional: Gordon, ed. The Story of Troilus (Toronto) ISBN: 0802063683
Mann and Boitano, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer ISBN: 0521894670

ENG 569-001: Advanced Topics in Asian-American Literature and Culture

Instructor: Marie Lo

ENG 549-001: Comics Theory and History

Instructor: Susan Kirtley

ENG 591-003: History of Literary Criticism and Theory I

Instructor: Bishupal Limbu

Examines the history of Western critical approaches to language and literature from ancient traditions through the Enlightenment. Also offered for undergraduate-level credit as Eng 491 and may be taken only once for credit.

ENG 594-001: Topics in Critical Theory and Methods: Queer Theory

Instructor: Sarah Ensor

Undergraduate Writing Courses

WR 115-002: Introduction to College Writing

Instructor: TBD

A writing course for first-year students to help prepare them for Freshman Inquiry or Wr 121. Introduces college-level writing and reading, along with general study skills. Provides practice at formal and informal writing, responding to a variety of readings, learning textual conventions, and building confidence.

WR 121-007: College Writing

Instructor: TBD

A writing course for lower-division students, in which they develop critical thinking abilities by reading and writing, increase their rhetorical strategies, practice writing processes, and learn textual conventions. Includes formal and informal writing, responding to a variety of readings, sharing writing with other students, and revising individual pieces for a final portfolio of work.

WR 199-001: Special Studies

Instructor: Daniel DeWeese

May be repeated for a maximum of 12 credits. See department for course description. (Credit to be arranged.)

WR 200-002: Writing About Literature

Instructor: TBD

FULFILLS LOWER DIVISION REQUIREMENT FOR ENG MAJORS

Introduction to various approaches for writing about literature. Focuses on ways of responding to literature, ways of explicating literature, ways of analyzing literature through writing, and ways of integrating formal research into a written analysis of literature. Special attention will be paid to the writing process, including multiple drafting and revision.

WR 210-001: Grammar Refresher

Instructor: TBD

A writing course for students who wish to refresh their grammar skills. Using informal and formal writing, it focuses on parts of speech, sentence construction, and punctuation; tracking particular grammar problems; and learning to edit.

WR 212-002: Introductory Fiction Writing

Instructor: Thea Prieto

Introduces the beginning fiction writer to basic techniques of developing character, point of view, plot, and story idea in fiction. Includes discussion of student work. Recommended: Freshman Inquiry.

WR 212-004: Introductory Fiction Writing

Instructor: Suman Mallick

WR 213-001: Introductory Poetry Writing

Instructor: Jac Nelson

Introduces the beginning writer of poetry to basic techniques for developing a sense of language, meter, sound, imagery, and structure. Includes discussion of professional examples and student work. Recommended: Freshman Inquiry.

WR 213-004: Introductory Poetry Writing

Instructor: Karolinn Fiscaletti

WR 213-003: Introductory Poetry Writing

Instructor: TBD

WR 213-005: Introductory Poetry Writing

Instructor: TBD

WR 214-003: Introductory Nonfiction Writing

Instructor: Catherine Johnson

An introduction to writing with the major forms and techniques of literary nonfiction. Beginning with exercises in foundational skills such as description, reportage and the crafting of personal narrative, students will write and respond to short works of creative nonfiction. May be repeated once for a total of 8 credits. Expected preparation: Freshman Inquiry or equivalent.

WR 222-006: Writing Research Papers

Instructor: TBD

An elective course. The techniques for compiling and writing research papers. Attention to available reference materials, use of library, taking notes, critical evaluation of evidence, and conventions for documenting academic papers. Practice in organizing and writing a long expository essay based on use of library resources. Recommended: Wr 121 or Freshman Inquiry. May not be used to fulfill English major requirements.

WR 227-001: Introductory Technical Writing

Instructor: TBD

Practical experience in forms of technical communication, emphasizing basic organization and presentation of technical information. Focuses on strategies for analyzing the audience and its information needs. Recommended: Wr 121 or Freshman Inquiry.

WR 228-001: Media Writing

Instructor: Brett Campbell

An introductory course in media reporting and writing. Focus on identifying newsworthiness, writing leads, constructing news stories, interviewing, and attributing quotes. Students learn to gather local news, writing some stories in a computer lab on deadline. Expected preparation: Wr 121 or Freshman Inquiry. May be repeated once for a total of 8 credits.

WR 312-002: Intermediate Fiction Writing

Instructor: TBD

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Continues the study of fictional techniques introduced in Wr 212. Includes such advanced instruction as variations on the classic plot, complex points of view, conventions of genre, and development of ideas for future use. Emphasizes discussion of student work. Prerequisite: B or higher in Wr 212, or consent of instructor based on a writing sample.

WR 312-001: Intermediate Fiction Writing

Instructor: TBD

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

WR 313-001: Intermediate Poetry Writing

Instructor: TBD

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Continues the study of poetry writing techniques introduced in Wr 213. Includes additional instruction in poetic forms, variations on traditional forms, and experimental forms. Emphasizes discussion of student work. Prerequisite: B or above in Wr 213 or consent of instructor based on a writing sample

WR 323-001: Writing as Critical Inquiry

Instructor: TBD

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

A writing course for upper-division students, which offers sophisticated approaches to writing and reading. Students enhance critical thinking abilities by reading and writing challenging material, refine their rhetorical strategies, practice writing processes with special attention to revision and style, and write and read in a variety of genres. Includes formal and informal writing, sharing writing with other students, and preparing a final portfolio of work. Recommended: satisfactory completion of Wr 121 or Freshman Inquiry.

WR 327-003: Technical Report Writing

Instructor: TBD

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Strategies for presenting technical information from the technician, management, and lay person's perspectives; rhetorical theory and techniques for adapting technical prose to nontechnical audiences; and techniques for emphasizing and de-emphasizing information. Recommended: Wr 323.

WR 331-002: Book Publishing for Writers

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Provides an overview of the book publishing process, organized around the division of labor typically found in publishing houses. Through readings, discussion, and participation in mock publishing companies, students learn about editorial, design, production, marketing, distribution, and sales.

WR 333-002: Advanced Composition

Instructor: Loretta Rosenberg

lrosenberg@pdx.edu

"I don't see writing as a communication of something already discovered, as 'truths' already known. Rather, I see writing as a process of experiment. It's like any discovery job; you don't know what's going to happen until you try it. All life is like that." William Stafford from Writing the Australian Crawl: Views of the Writer's Vocation

In this course we'll read various forms of non-fiction from essays and articles to memoir and personal narratives but mostly we'll write. What makes for a compelling story? What keeps you reading? What makes you stop? We'll identify the techniques writers use to engage readers and keep them reading. We'll practice using those same techniques in our own writing. We'll learn some strategies to help keep you moving in your writing when you feel stuck. Students will keep a journal for in-class writing assignments and develop some of these assignments into longer pieces. We'll share our work with each other and learn to give and receive helpful feedback.

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Essay writing with particular attention to student's area of specialization. Advanced practice in essay writing. Recommended: Freshman Inquiry or two writing courses.

WR 333-001: Advanced Composition

Instructor: Susan Reese

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Essay writing with particular attention to student's area of specialization. Advanced practice in essay writing. Recommended: Freshman Inquiry or two writing courses.

WR 399-002: Special Studies: Food Writing

Instructor: Diana Abu-Jaber

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

See department for course description. (Credit to be arranged.)

WR 410-004: Selected Topics in Writing: The Popular Book in the United States

Instructor: John Henley

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Few readers have heard of Maria Cummins, Susan Warner, Eden Southworth, Laura Jean Libbey, Timothy Shay Arthur, George Lippard, Augusta Jane Evans Wilson, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, or Harold Bell Wright. But just a century ago, their works were beloved, debated, and popular. We know modern publishing houses such as Random House, Little Brown, and Simon and Schuster, but what of the publishers that once populated the booksellers’ shelves, such as A.L. Burt, Street and Smith, and Porter and Coates. Most American literature survey courses introduce students to the great literature from our past, yet many of the “great writers” were not popular in their lifetime. In this class, the student will be challenged to unlearn all they have been taught about “great literature” and explore books often ignored by scholars, but devoured by American readers, and to investigate the factors that determine the likelihood of a book being a bestseller. While designed for those wishing to pursue a career in acquisitions editing, the course will also prove interesting to students of popular culture and the history of the book in America.

WR 410-010: Selected Topics in Writing: Transmedia Marketing for Publishers

Instructor: Kathi Inman Berens

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Transmedia is storytelling across multiple forms of media with each element making distinctive contributions to a viewer/user/player’s understanding of the story world. This class applies transmedia principles to book marketing. Students begin by tracking then discerning best practices in social media marketing by book authors. Students develop expertise in social media marketing strategy. Our core textbook is Spreadable Media by Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford and Joshua Green. The class culminates in a collaborative, real-world transmedia book marketing campaign for a short story collection to be published by Ooligan Press October 2016, Siblings and Other Disappointments. Throughout, students write papers reflecting on their learning process and distilling best practices in social media book marketing. It is recommended (though not required) that students have taken Book Marketing prior to enrolling in this class.

WR 410-005: Selected Topics in Writing: Editorial Theory

Instructor: Per Henningsgaard

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

The role of the author in relation to the text has been much debated in literary theory and criticism. However, this course asks the less-often considered, but equally crucial question, “What is the role of the editor in relation to the text?” In its variety of possible answers to this question, editorial theory affects every text you have ever read. This is especially true when the editor is confronted with the practical problem of preserving or transmitting past texts to contemporary readers, often in media or languages different than those in which the text was originally composed. But it is also relevant to contemporary texts and their living authors, as editorial theory helps us think about tricky situations involving Western editors of non-Western texts, male editors of female texts, and so forth.

WR 410-007: Selected Topics in Writing: Writing for Trade Publications

Instructor: Jeff Gunderson

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

This course covers the fundamentals of effective technical communications and provides an overview of technical report writing formats. Students draw on personal work experiences and career interests to practice strategies and produce technical reports. In the course, students will obtain an understanding of technical communication basics, develop knowledge of technical writing styles, and learn the technical communication process including research, page design and using visual aids. Students will also focus on creating accurate, well-designed and concise technical reports and documents.

WR 412-002: Advanced Fiction Writing

Instructor: Leni Zumas

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

By honing their powers of observation and insight, members of this workshop will test Proust’s claim that “the voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” A range of exercises, readings, and discussions will push each writer to unearth fresh possibilities in his or her fiction.

Prerequisite: “B” or higher in Wr 312, or consent of instructor based on a writing sample.

WR 413-001: Advanced Poetry Writing

Instructor: John Beer

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Further refines technical skills by demanding more ambitious works of poetry by the advanced writer. Students will have an opportunity to do research and can expect to confront a variety of technical problems emerging from class discussion. The exploration of various techniques, schools, and poetic voices will be encouraged. Prerequisite: “B” or higher in Wr 313, or consent of instructor based on a writing sample.

WR 416-001: Screenwriting

Instructor: TBD

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Students will be introduced to the process of conceiving, structuring, writing, rewriting, and marketing a screenplay for the contemporary American marketplace. "Screenplay paradigms" will be discussed, and a variety of movies will be analyzed. May be repeated for credit. Also offered for graduate-level credit as Wr 516.

WR 420-001: Writing: Process and Response

Instructor: Tony Wolk

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Provides opportunities for students to write in various genres. Includes language attitudes, writing process, and reader response. Also offered for graduate-level credit as Wr 520. Recommended: one upper-division writing course. May be repeated for a maximum of 8 credits.

WR 426-002: Document Design

Instructor: Tracy Dillon

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Document planning, creation, and revision, including discussion of the use and abuse of language in business, government, insurance, and law. Students will consider general strategies for document production; analyze different document styles; address questions of target audience; evaluate documents for readability and efficiency; and study the Plain English Movement and its legislative and legal implications. Also offered for graduate-level credit as Wr 526 and may be taken only once for credit.

WR 456-001: Forms of Nonfiction

Instructor: Michael McGregor

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Each of the main categories of nonfiction writing (memoir, essay and literary journalism) has its traditional forms, but some of the best writing about the world around us—or inside us—defies expectations, using experimental or hybrid approaches to deepen meaning or effect. In this class, we’ll study and practice both traditional and experimental approaches to writing about everything from travel to nature, memory to recent experience.

Through readings and exercises, students will be encouraged to find and invent new forms for their work while expanding their thinking about what constitutes nonfiction writing. (Many of the approaches we’ll look at will be applicable to fiction writing too.)

WR 460-002: Introduction to Book Publishing

Instructor: Per Henningsgaard

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Provides a detailed overview of the publishing process, organized around the division of labor, including introductions to contemporary American publishing, issues of intellectual commerce, copyright law, publishing contracts, book editing, book design and production, book marketing and distribution, and bookselling. Based on work in mock publishing companies, students prepare portfolios of written documents, i.e., book proposals, editorial guidelines, design and production standards, and marketing plans. Guest speakers from the publishing industry and field trips provide exposure to the industry. Also offered for graduate-level credit as Wr 560 and may be taken only once for credit.

WR 460-001: Introduction to Book Publishing

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

WR 461-002: Book Editing

Instructor: Adam Rodriguez

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Provides a comprehensive course in professional book editing, including editorial management, acquisitions editing, substantive/developmental editing, and copyediting. Issues specific to both fiction and nonfiction books will be covered. Also offered for graduate-level credit as Wr 561 and may be taken only once for credit.

WR 462-001: Book Design Software

Instructor: Kelley Dodd

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Comprehensive course in professional book design and production. Issues specific to the design of fiction and nonfiction books in a variety of genres and markets will be covered, including the applications of both old and new technologies in design and production. Also offered for graduate-level credit as Wr 562 and may be taken only once for credit.

WR 463-PB7: Book Marketing

Instructor: Kathryn Juergens

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Comprehensive course in professional book marketing. Issues specific to the marketing of fiction/ nonfiction books in variety of genres and markets will be covered. Students will do market research, produce marketing plans, write press releases, write advertising copy, and develop related marketing materials. Also offered for graduate-level credit as Wr 563 and may be taken only once for credit.

WR 474-001: Publishing Studio

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Perform the work of a real publishing house, from acquiring manuscripts to selling books. Gain publishing experience by participating in the various departments of a student-staffed publishing house, Ooligan Press. Departments include Acquisitions, Editing, Design and Sustainable Production, Marketing, External Promotions, Sales, Digital Content, Social Media, and Project Management and Operations. Also offered for graduate-level credit as Wr 574; may be taken multiple times for credit.

WR 475-001: Publishing Lab

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENG MAJORS

Perform the work of a real publishing house, from acquiring manuscripts to selling books. Gain publishing experience by participating in the various departments of a student-staffed publishing house, Ooligan Press. Departments include Acquisitions, Editorial, Design, Marketing and Sales, Digital, and Social Media. Also offered for graduate-level credit as Wr 575; may be taken multiple times for credit.

Graduate Writing Courses

WR 507-001: Writing Seminar: Fiction

Instructor: Madeline McDonnell

Rising Above Rising Action: Fresh Approaches to Plot and Structure “We are all like Scheherazade's husband,” E.M. Forster writes, “in that we want to know what happens next. That is universal and that is why the backbone of the novel has to be a...narrative of events.” But this seminar will consider how aspects of a novel or story other than event might drive a fiction forward and determine its structure. Is it possible, for example, to produce narrative momentum, climax, and resolution through sound, image, or inquiry rather than action? Might lyric pattern and variation create entertaining tension, compelling a reader to turn the pages in search of sonic resolution? Might a significant shift in diction or description be experienced as a dramatic act or “happening”? And what role might action and event still play in fictions that are organized around other aspects of craft? As we attempt to answer such questions and produce our own “uneventful” fictions, we will interrogate workshop truisms surrounding plot (e.g.

“change must happen in scene”; “do not leave your characters alone”; “drama=desire + danger”; etc.) and look closely at poetic and joke structures, as well as works patterned around objects, details, refrains, and themes by writers such as Paul Beatty, Deborah Eisenberg, Mavis Gallant, Shelia Heti, Ben Lerner, Shane McCrae, Leonard Michaels, Alice Munro, Maggie Nelson, and Grace Paley.

WR 507-003: Writing Seminar: Poetry

Instructor: Michele Glazer

Fragment evokes Time. Time turns what’s whole into fragments. We will explore the fragment; fragment as rubble, remnant, evidence, constellation, decay, as possibility.

We will devote much of the term to reading, discussing and inhabiting works that engage the fragment variously. We will write under its influence. The course is intended to be generative. The intent is to raise questions and to expand and complicate the expressive possibilities of fragment in your writing and thinking.

Among the questions we may consider: How do fragments carry meaning and what authority does a writer draw from using them? What does it mean to speak of the aesthetics of the fragment? What role have accident and chance in the matter of the fragment? How is a constructed fragment different from one created through abandonment, accident or loss? Is the experience of fragment necessarily an experience of loss? What is the role of memory in the experience of the fragment? How do fragments uniquely engage the reader? Is the fragment necessarily partial? How is the fragment associated with the process of thinking? What syntaxes suit it? What role do coordinators have in characterizing fragment, and so what? What does fragmentation say about the possibility of wholeness? If syntax maps mind in the process of discovering what it is thinking, how do sentence fragments map, and mean? What relation has velocity to fragment? What formal tensions operate in a highly fragmented piece? How does fragmentation effect narrative tension? Do fragments suggest any particular systems of meaning? What effect has fragmentation on hierarchies? What do you make of the spaces?

Texts may include Mourning Diary, Roland Barthes; Dora Bruder, Patrick Modiano; Novels in Three Lines, Felix Fénéon, as well as works by Sappho, Heraclitus, George Oppen, Camelias Elias, Ann Lauterbach, Marguerite Yourcenar, Mimnermos, Francis Ponge, Rodin & Rilke, Dickinson, Lydia Davis, Charles Wright & Cezanne, William Gass, etc.

WR 510-009: Selected Topics in Writing: Editorial Theory

Instructor: Per Henningsgaard

WR 510-010: Selected Topics in Writing: Transmedia Marketing for Publishers

Instructor: Kathi Inman Berens

WR 510-004: Selected Topics in Writing: The Popular Book in the United States

Instructor: John Henley

WR 510-007: Selected Topics in Writing: Writing for Trade Publications

Instructor: Jeff Gunderson

WR 510-013: MFA Thesis Workshop: Craft Colloquium

Instructor: Michele Glazer

This one-credit colloquium is intended primarily for MFA students, both first- and second-year and from all strands—fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. It is also open to MA and MS students (with instructor approval) who want to explore from multiple angles a focused area of craft that is important to you in your own writing. The colloquium is intended to be useful whether you are just beginning the program, or you are focusing on your thesis.

We’ll start by discussing possible topics, questions, and approaches. Each student will then develop a list of 4 to 6 texts in any genre or form—novel, memoir, poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, short stories—that will illuminate the issue. Colloquium members will give and receive feedback for each other on sources, processes, and strategies, as well as pose questions to consider that you would not have thought of. You’ll write a reflective essay -- 1500 to 1800 words -- that connects your reading and reflective piece to your other writing.

This colloquium is open to MA and MS students, with instructor approval.

WR 510-012: Selected Topics in Writing: MFA Colloquium

Instructor: Michele Glazer

The MFA Colloquium is a one-credit class designed to help orient you in the MFA, acquaint you with faculty members and their work, help you plan out your time in the program, and look around to a range of experiential opportunities. Our format will be deliberately loose so that we can address questions, frustrations, and enthusiasms you have as they come up. Topics may include procrastination, writer’s block, originality, and creativity, etc.

WR 520-001: Writing: Process and Response

Instructor: Tony Wolk

Provides opportunities for students to write in various genres. Includes language attitudes, writing process, and reader response. Also offered for undergraduate-level credit as Wr 420. Recommended: one upper-division writing course. May be repeated for a maximum of 8 credits.

WR 521-001: MFA Core Workshop in Fiction

Instructor: Leni Zumas

"I have rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever published,” claims Vladimir Nabokov in Speak, Memory. “My pencils outlast their erasers.” What does it mean to rewrite, rebuild, “re-see” a piece of fiction? In this workshop we’ll read essays, manifestos, confessions, and advice about the revision process, and students will apply a variety of revision procedures to their own work. We may also examine before-and-after drafts by literary heroes. Restricted to students admitted to the MFA program’s fiction strand.

WR 522-002: MFA Core Workshop in Poetry

Instructor: TBD

The MFA Core Workshop in Poetry focuses on the writing, revision, and critical discussion of student poems. Students' verbal and written critical analyses of their peers' work are informed by their reading of published poems representing a range of formal strategies and historical and cultural contexts, and by their reading in prosody and poetics. May be taken up to three times for credit. This course is restricted to graduate students admitted to the Writing Program (Poetry).

WR 523-002: MFA Core Workshop in Nonfiction

Instructor: Paul Collins

The best science and nature writing often looks to the use of essays or long-form narrative. Along with some short-form writing, we'll examine these more complex literary formats while writing, workshopping and revising publication-ready pieces.

Texts:

The Science Writers Handbook (2013) (978-0738216560)
Complications -- Atul Gawande (2002) (978-0312421700)
Packing for Mars -- Mary Roach (2010) (978-0393339918)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks -- Rebecca Skloot (2010) (978-1400052189)
Best American Science & Nature Writing 2015 -- ed. Rebecca Skloot (2015) (978-0544286740)
The Earth Moved -- Amy Stewart (2004) (978-1565124684)

WR 526-002: Document Design

Instructor: Tracy Dillon

Document planning, creation, and revision, including discussion of the use and abuse of language in business, government, insurance, and law. Students will consider general strategies for document production; analyze different document styles; address questions of target audience; evaluate documents for readability and efficiency; and study the Plain English Movement and its legislative and legal implications. Also offered for undergraduate-level credit as Wr 426 and may be taken only once for credit.

WR 556-001: Forms of Nonfiction

Instructor: Michael McGregor

WR 560-002: Introduction to Book Publishing

Instructor: Per Henningsgaard

Provides a detailed overview of the publishing process, organized around the division of labor, including introductions to contemporary American publishing, issues of intellectual commerce, copyright law, publishing contracts, book editing, book design and production, book marketing and distribution, and bookselling. Based on work in mock publishing companies, students prepare portfolios of written documents, i.e., book proposals, editorial guidelines, design and production standards, and marketing plans. Guest speakers from the publishing industry and field trips provide exposure to the industry. Also offered for undergraduate-level credit as Wr 460 and may be taken only once for credit.

WR 560-001: Introduction to Book Publishing

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

Provides a detailed overview of the publishing process, organized around the division of labor, including introductions to contemporary American publishing, issues of intellectual commerce, copyright law, publishing contracts, book editing, book design and production, book marketing and distribution, and bookselling. Based on work in mock publishing companies, students prepare portfolios of written documents, i.e., book proposals, editorial guidelines, design and production standards, and marketing plans. Guest speakers from the publishing industry and field trips provide exposure to the industry. Also offered for undergraduate-level credit as Wr 460 and may be taken only once for credit.

WR 561-002: Book Editing

Instructor: Adam Rodriguez

Provides a comprehensive course in professional book editing, including editorial management, acquisitions editing, substantive/developmental editing, and copyediting. Issues specific to both fiction and nonfiction books will be covered. Also offered for undergraduate-level credit as Wr 461 and may be taken only once for credit.

WR 562-001: Book Design Software

Instructor: Kelley Dodd

Provides a strong foundation in design software used in the book publishing industry, focusing on Adobe InDesign. Also explores Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat, as well as XHTML and e-book design. The class considers audience expectations through a range of hands-on design projects. Also offered for undergraduate-level credit as Wr 462 and may be taken only once for credit.

WR 563-PB7: Book Marketing

Instructor: Kathryn Juergens

Comprehensive course in professional book marketing. Issues specific to marketing of fiction and nonfiction books in variety of genres and markets will be covered. Students will do market research, produce marketing plans, write press releases, write advertising copy, and develop related marketing materials. Also offered for undergraduate-level credit as Wr 463 and may be taken only once for credit.

WR 574-001: Publishing Studio

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

Perform the work of a real publishing house, from acquiring manuscripts to selling books. Gain publishing experience by participating in the various departments of a student-staffed publishing house, Ooligan Press. Departments include Acquisitions, Editing, Design and Sustainable Production, Marketing, External Promotions, Sales, Digital Content, Social Media, and Project Management and Operations. Also offered for undergraduate-level credit as Wr 474; may be taken multiple times for credit.

WR 575-001: Publishing Lab

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

Perform the work of a real publishing house, from acquiring manuscripts to selling books. Gain publishing experience by participating in the various departments of a student-staffed publishing house, Ooligan Press. Departments include Acquisitions, Editing, Design and Sustainable Production, Marketing, External Promotions, Sales, Digital Content, Social Media, and Project Management and Operations. Also offered for undergraduate-level credit as Wr 474; may be taken multiple times for credit.