Undergraduate Courses

17353 11:15a-12:30p TR 3 cr.

The years 1600-1800 saw revolutions, religious upheaval, colonial expansion, and dramatic changes in the status of women and the lower classes. In this course, we will read representative English and American literature from a wide range of genres: drama, lyric and epic poetry, philosophical prose, travel narratives, and at least one novel. Our main topic for consideration will be the lure of the new: how does exploration of the Americas provoke a crisis in perception as well as the desire to conquer? how does the devastation of civil war demand new thinking about the political bonds that hold communities together? how do new genres emerge in relation to changing intellectual concerns?

Throughout, we will consider the relation of novelty in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to our current sense of this literature as, perhaps, inaccessibly old. Does this literature seem old to us because it does not speak to current concerns, or because we have so thoroughly absorbed its concerns that they no longer seem fresh? And how might we shift the terms of those conversations?/p>

Texts will include William Shakespeare's The Tempest; poetry by John Donne, Andrew Marvell, and John Milton; Aphra Behn's Oroonoko; Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Embassy Letters; Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock; and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Assignments will include a presentation, informal and formal papers, and a final exam.

17354 11:15a-12:30p TR 3 cr.

During the nineteenth century, the Anglo-American world provided a stage for some of the most important and compelling struggles for emancipation. Emancipation struggles involved many groups and took manifold forms. Moreover, they became visible — or sometimes remained invisible — in print in diverse ways. This section of E303, Literatures in English, will examine texts written in the nineteenth century — both canonical and non-canonical — as it considers the struggles for liberation among slaves and anti-slavery supporters, workers and their advocates, and women and their supporters. We will read across genres, considering novels, autobiographies, prose, poems, and plays. As we read, we will seek to understand the political, authorial, and ethical implications of emancipating self and other. We will consider a range of authors, including, but not limited to, Jane Austen, Mary Prince, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, Frederick Douglass, John Stuart Mill, Elizabeth Robbins, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. As we read the century, we will consider what narrative strategies were successful and which genres became predominant as expressions of yearnings to be free. We will also assess the models of selfhood available for those seeking freedom and their advocates.

Class meetings will include some lecturing and a heavy emphasis on participation. Students will write essays and complete a final project. Quizzes and tests will also be included.

25439 1:25p-2:15p MW 3 cr.

This course will explore American literary culture through the lens of novels and other types of writing which have sold extraordinary well in the United States over the past two centuries. By looking at best selling literary works beginning with Charlotte Temple (1791) and moving through J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter (1997), we will investigate not only why these narratives gained such popularity, but also what relationship they have had to American politics, fine arts, gender relations, racial tensions, and religion. We will also study some of the motion picture adaptations based on these books. Aside from the reading for the course, there will be two short papers and weekly quizzes. There will be no midterm and no final examination.

Other texts might include: The Life of Washington, Ten Nights in a Barroom, Quaker City, The Sheik, Peyton Place, The Godfather, and Misery.

17379 1:00p-12:15p MWF 3 cr.

This course will be devoted to examining poetry in English from a wide variety of historical periods, from the Middle Ages to the present, to cultivate an appreciation for poetry as a genre and dexterity at interpreting and writing about poetic texts. Some of the aspects of poetry to which especial attention will be devoted are the use of imagery, poetic form (such as meter and rhyme, and traditional forms such as the sonnet and the sestina), the poetic use of language (such as metaphor and simile, and sound devices), the use of symbols, and the ways that modern poetry achieves its effects while often discarding such conventional devices. Since this course is designed to satisfy the Intensive Writing requirement of the College of Arts and Sciences, students will write at least 5,000 words (about 20 typed pages) over the course of the semester, in a series of graded paper assignments, and they will be required to revise at least one paper during the term. There will be no examinations. Course text: Booth, Hunter, and Mays, The Norton Introduction to Poetry.

29820 1:00p-2:15p TR 3 cr.

At its heart, L223 is an introduction to the contemporary Ethnic American novel, and the historical and cultural contexts that inform these texts. Our theme, "The Incredibles," reflects what I see as a dominant trend in Ethnic American novels. The works that we will study use metaphors and tropes of what we might call the supernatural, otherworldly, or the magical to imagine raced and ethnic identities, histories, and communities in the United States. In this course, we will examine time travel and American Indian identity (Sherman Alexie's Flight) ; haunted houses, ghosts, and the magical (Ana Castillo's So Far From God); and unexplainable events grounded in reality (Julie Otsuka's When the Emperor Was Divine, Toni Morrison's A Mercy, Art Speigelman's In the Shadow of No Towers). These works speak about and play with important constructs—not only of racial and ethnic others in U. S. popular culture, but also with contexts of other nations, cultures, and traditions. Thus while you don't need to be an expert on, say, the history of race, class, gender, disability, and sexuality in the United States, you will need to think about the ways in which all of these texts might be responding to, commenting on, and even working against some dominant assumptions in mainstream U. S. culture. We'll provide you with important contexts in lecture and discussion section.

Our second objective will be to practice argumentative, literary analysis. A central claim for this course is that literary texts make debatable claims and arguments. You will learn how to unpack the argument of each novel or film, or, more precisely, what you define as the argument of each work. What cultural issue or problem does the work identify? Why? What is its argument regarding this issue? How does the work support this argument? Does it offer any solutions? If so, what are they? If not, why not? Our final objective is to develop tools and strategies for effective writing. Writing is, at its core, a process; this course will introduce you to different ways of thinking about this process. Eventually, you'll need to define your own individual process, since we all write and think in different ways. You will begin by thinking about your own strengths and identifying your goals for the course. In this class, we will be focusing on specific genres of writing about literature: analysis (which we'll call close reading) and the argument essay.

27595 2:30p-3:45p MW 3 cr.

In a recent interview, novelist and physician, Abraham Verghese remarks that "geography really shapes your destiny." Taking this insight as our starting point, this course will examine the ways in which different authors make sense of the relationship between geography and experience, focusing in particular on novels that are set in conflict zones. The novels on the syllabus represent individuals caught in extraordinary historical circumstances including civil war and foreign occupation. Our focus will be on how the characters respond, often with great courage and honor, to their historical challenges. We will place the novels in their historical context by learning about ethno-nationalism, sectarian violence, and the gender dynamics that underwrite these geopolitical conflicts. In the second half of the course, we will turn our attention to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the history of US involvement in South Asia. To this end, we will view Charlie Wilson's War. Students should expect to write one 5-6 page paper, take three exams, and actively participate in class discussion.

READINGS:

Required:
Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone (Ethiopia and the United States)
Michael Ondatjee, Anil's Ghost (Sri Lanka)
Slavenka Drakulic, S. (Yugoslavia)
Etel Adnan, Sitt Marie Rose (Lebanon) Manlio Argueta, One Day of Life (El Salvador)
Mohammed Hanif, A Case of Exploding Mangoes (Pakistan)
Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns (Afghanistan)

Recommended:
Eqbal Ahmad, Confronting Empire

FILMS:
This Hard Ground
Picture Me an Enemy
Maria's Story
Charlie Wilson's War

25863 10:10a-11:00a MW (90 students) 3 cr.

I have four goals for this course: you should leave it with an intimate knowledge of Chaucer's works, especially the Canterbury Tales, and Troilus and Criseyde; you should acquire reading fluency in late Middle English; you should carry with you knowledge of medieval literature and culture as background to further reading, not only in the Middle English period, but in other periods, as well; you should have as much opportunity as possible to refine your skills as readers and writers. We can agree that I propose an ambitious, complicated project here, but also, I hope, that these goals are reasonable and desirable.

We'll start with some of Chaucer's lyric poetry and other "minor" works, including the Book of the Duchess, the Parliament of Fowls, and some of the Legends of Good Women; then we'll read most of the Canterbury Tales, finishing up the term with Troilus and Criseyde, a much admired and extraordinarily influential poem.

In thinking about taking a course on Chaucer, you may worry some about the Middle English; it's true that it takes some getting used to, takes a little work, but it's less different from Modern English than you may think, and, anyway, it's interesting to learn what earlier English Modern English comes from. We'll be there to help you learn what you need to know about the language in order to enjoy Chaucer fully. And you will enjoy the work: Chaucer is arguably the most thrilling storyteller in English, with a remarkable, moving skill in drawing characters, and a great poet's grasp of language and form. I am delighted to have this opportunity to share Chaucer with you.

Coursework will include some exercises and quizzes (focused on learning Middle English), a shorter essay (5-8 pages) early in the term, a longer essay (15-20 pages) later in the term), as well as midterm and final examinations. The text for the class will be Larry D. Benson and others, eds., The Riverside Chaucer 3/e (1987).

29850 1:00p-2:15p TR 3 cr.

Close study of Milton's major poems—Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. Emphasis will be on the special relation of meaning to method in Milton's poetry, with attention to the historical context of his religious, social, and political ideas. We'll also read and discuss a number of Milton's shorter and earlier poems—his sonnets and "Lycidas," for example—and some of his prose writings, such as Areopagitica, his tract defending the freedom to publish, since the prose texts cast light on his major poetic achievements. There will be two papers, an hour exam, and a comprehensive final, along with other assignments of a more occasional sort. The three texts we'll be using (all by John Milton) are Paradise Lost, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007); Complete Shorter Poems, ed. Stella. P. Revard (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009); Areopagitica, ed. George H. Sabine (Harlan Davidson, 1951).

25872 9:30a-10:45a TR 3 cr.

This course is designed to study major works of prose and poetry written in the Victorian period. Our focus will be on the ways that these texts construct "modernity," a term that has been of continuing use in trying to understand ourselves and our society. We won't drive that term into the ground, I hope, but we will let it organize many of our readings and discussions. Those readings will include a novel—most likely George Eliot's Middlemarch, which is often considered the greatest English novel. Most of our time, however, will be spent with poetry and non-fiction prose. Additional texts are likely to include poetry by Tennyson, Robert Browning, Arnold, Christina Rossetti, and Hopkins; prose by John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, and Charles Darwin. There will probably be two exams and two papers assigned.

27599 9:30a-10:45a TR 3 cr.

This course is designed to provide a broad overview of English prose since the mid-twentieth century. The second half of the twentieth century was a tumultuous period for England. The era began with the nation emerging from war at once victorious and devastated, and still ruling an enormous but increasingly rebellious empire. Then followed an ambitious experiment with socialism, the development and eventual fragmentation of the welfare state, decolonization, increased migration, and attendant seismic changes in the class structure, gender relations, and racial affiliations of the population.

Using work by major writers who have shaped English letters in the last few decades, our texts will follow the significant aesthetic and philosophical developments of the period: the new realism, postmodernism, postcolonial fiction, and the recent move to an ironic realism. Because the aesthetics of prose in this period owe considerably to dramatic works, we will include some plays in our readings. Each of the texts we will read was influential in its time, both for its aesthetic innovations and because it prompted reflection upon the relation between literature and its political, social and philosophical context. We will give ourselves a thematic focus by attending to how authors address the loss or destabilization of religious, political and epistemological certainties. For instance, in many of our texts we will find anxiety regarding the significance of the individual, the basis for ethical action in an age characterized by flux, doubts cast on institutions such as the nation and religion, and the dubious legacy of previous generations. Throughout the semester we'll discuss the intricate relationship between form and content—the meeting point where authors struggle to say the unsayable, to make room for untold stories, and to create narratives that reflect and participate in the world-altering events of their remarkable times.

Brief, in-class lectures will provide the historical context for mapping the intellectual trajectory traced by our literary texts. Authors will drawn from the following list: J. B. Priestly, John Osborne, Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter, Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, Pat Barker, Caryl Churchill, Caryl Phillips, Bernadine Evaristo, Julian Barnes, and David Mitchell. Assignments likely will include two essay, an in-class presentation, a midterm examination, and a final examination.

29829 11:15a-12:45p TR 3 cr.

This course offers an introduction to the fundamentals of LGBTQ studies. We will address pertinent topics such as the history of sexuality (primarily in the United States); the mythology of the Stonewall riots; the rise of gay marriage; intersections between sexuality and race; the urban/rural/suburban divide; and recent "It Gets Better" campaigns. Along the way we will cover:

• Sexual inverts in 1890s Memphis
• Drag shows in 1960s Chicago
• Lesbian pulp fiction from the 1950s
• Gay Liberation movements in the 1970s
• AIDS activism in the 1980s
• marriage equality campaigns from the 1990s
• Lady Gaga now

25873 11:15a-12:05p MWF 3 cr.

American publishing experience unprecedented, exponential growth during the first half of the nineteenth century. An emerging market economy, widespread religious revival, reforms in education, and innovations in print technology worked together to create a culture increasingly formed and framed by the power of print. While debates raged about whether the United States even had its own literature, other debates concerning American printed material appeared as well. This course will examine American literature and its place in the cultural landscape through the lens of the popular and the supposedly "classic" literature of the time. There will be frequent reading quizzes and both shorter and longer papers. Texts may include: Charlotte Temple by Susannah Rowson; The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper; Hope Leslie by Catharine Maria Sedgwick; Moby-Dick by Herman Melville; Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger; Behind a Mask by Louisa May Alcott; Ten Nights in a Bar-Room by T. S. Arthur; portions of Quaker City by George Lippard and Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

29868 9:30a-10:45a TR 3 cr.

At the start of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the novel asks what it would be like to have no memory of the world. At the end of Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina, Bone Boatwright wonders if she can ever forget the traumas of sexual knowledge. Throughout Nella Larsen's Quicksand, Helga Crane reels from misreading the key scenes of her life. All three novels posit that if multiple forms of knowledge exist, so too must multiple forms of ignorance. Alongside these three works, we'll test this hypothesis with a variety of twentieth- and twenty-first century literatures by Ernest Hemingway, Tillie Olsen, Toni Morrison, William Gibson, T.C. Boyle, Audre Lorde, and Edward Albee. Along the way, we'll hit hot-button topics like racial, socio-economic, ablest, and sexual ignorance as well as themes of denial, repression, unawareness, misinformation, elephants in the room, ideas swept under the rug, incomprehension, unfamiliarity, stupidity, incredulity, and the unconscious. We'll also examine the felt experience of being uneducated, in the dark, inexpert, unacquainted, and out-of-the-loop—of readings that try to do anything but teach you something new.

27602 7:15p-8:30p TR 3 cr.

This course starts at the beginning of the century with an examination of the convoluted relation of anti-modernists (Robert Frost, E. A. Robinson) to modernists (T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound) and extends up through its closing decade tracing the experiments with language of John Ashbery, Jorie Graham, and the L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poets. Throughout special attention will be given to the role of the poetic image (in the work of Amy Lowell and Ezra Pound; in the innovations of Robert Lowell—Amy's nephew—and Adrienne Rich, etc.) and to the workings of poetic syntax (in the writings of William Carlos Williams, Louis Zukofsky, and Gertrude Stein, among others). The core aim of this course is to acquire an overview of various schools of poetry that sprouted up between 1900-2000 and the innovations associated with them, by carefully reading some of the best poetry written in the US during those years. A precondition of this project is that students keep up with the assignments, by performing their own careful readings of the poems as they are discussed, and this will be monitored, accordingly, through weekly small assignments. Learning to write critical essays about poetry is a second goal of the course, a task thematized, discussed, and, of course, practiced.

29878 11:15a-12:30p TR 3 cr.

In this course we will explore the literary and cultural activity of scientists who have combined employment in the sciences with active writing careers. These writer-scientists have created a distinct literary genre that is generally called "popular science" or "science popularization. " A good definition for the genre is: non-fiction prose about scientific knowledge for non-specialist but interested audiences. The form is distinctly didactic but its practitioners also seek to inspire as well as inform, to produce narratives that entertain while demonstrating science's intimate imbrication in the way our world is ordered. The overall aim is to produce a scientific literacy that is reliably informed, in which the knowledge gained is valued as the foundation of liberal education.

We will be concerned with some of the questions raised by this activity. Is the knowledge shared by science writing an accurate reflection of science? What are the conventions that make popular science a distinct form of writing? How does the genre make its case for science as a vital part of the social/political world we inhabit? What do we make of the role that celebrity can play in the advocacy of a writer-scientist? What is the relationship between science popularization and science fiction?

For the sake of disciplinary and narrative coherence we will focus on authors in the fields of astronomy, biology, physics and cosmology. The course will likely include James D. Watson, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Neil de Grasse Tyson, C.P. Snow, and Brian Greene as our representative writer-scientists. Please note that while the course number indicates a focus on American prose science is an international affair; we will, therefore, range across national boundaries in terms of the authors we read.

During the semester we will also sample popular science activity in other media. To this end we will screen episodes or clips from television programs, documentaries and filmed lectures from a variety of sources.

This course requires two papers (3-5 typewritten pages, double-spaced), two exams, one research team project, active and informed classroom participation and attendance.

17385 TR 4:00p-5:15p, 3 cr, A&H

This course will explore how performance shaped and responded to transformations in American culture in the roughly one hundred years between 1830 and 1950. In addition to studying dramatic texts and attending to the world of the theatre, we will also look closely at performance traditions such as minstrelsy and melodrama; cabaret and nightlife performances; realism and expressionism. By looking at this diverse range of material, we will develop an archive of performances through which to consider how modern American identities and social relations have been represented, elaborated, challenged, and (mis) recognized on the American stage. Some questions that will guide our inquiry throughout the semester include: How has performance responded to the rapid and sometimes violent changes that define modern life? How are social relations imagined and reimagined on the American stage? How did performers, writers, and directors use theatrical innovation and experimentation to address and redress the conditions of social relations under modernity? We will read plays by T. D. Rice, Anna Cora Mowatt, George Aiken, Angelina Weld Grimké, Eugene O'Neill, Susan Glaspell, Sophie Treadwell, Lynn Riggs, Tennessee Williams, and Elmer Rice, as well as additional primary and secondary materials about American performance culture. Students will be expected to attend class regularly and participate actively in readings and discussions throughout the semester, as well as complete one short essay, one longer research paper, and a number of formal response papers.

29887 10:10a-11:00a MWF 3 cr.

The Bible has long been recognized as the most important source of Western literary tradition, the "Great Code of Art," as William Blake called it. But until fairly recently, little attention has been paid to the literary qualities of the Bible's own stories, poems, proverbs, etc. This course is intended as both an introduction to the critical movement which studies "the Bible as Literature" (and thus features some critical reading drawn from that movement) and an opportunity to think and talk about the literary aspects of this important book, a book which I hope will emerge as altogether more unusual, stranger, than we might initially think. In addition, during one week we'll consider the ways that more conventionally "literary" texts transform biblical accounts, by reading David Maine's Fallen, a retelling of the story of the fall and of Cain and Abel. We'll use the Harper Collins Study Bible, since it has a good set of notes. Assignments will include 2 interpretive essays, some smaller writing assignments, a mid-term and a final. Warning: The instructor of this course assumes no doctrinal perspective on the Bible or its status as the inerrant word of God. Questions of faith and religion are not part of an understanding of the Bible as a work of literature. Both believers and non-believers in the Bible's holiness are welcome in the class, but students who cannot discuss or think about biblical texts apart from their status as sacred truth should not take a course such as this one.

24206 1:00p-2:15p TR, 3 cr.

A character in Jeffrey Eugenides' 2011 novel The Marriage Plot argues that "the novel had reached its apogee with the marriage plot and had never recovered from its disappearance. In the days when success in life had depended on marriage, and marriage had depended on money, novelists had had a subject to write about. The great epics sang of war, the novel of marriage." This course will consider these and other hypotheses about the fate of "the marriage plot" in Anglo-American fiction and culture since Jane Austen.

Was the rise of the genre of the novel in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in fact inseparable from the power of marriage as a cultural force? Did the rise of no-fault divorce and co-habitation in the twentieth century undermine the novel's importance by diminishing its central topic? We will test such claims by reading a range of British and American novels (and one film) from the early nineteenth to the early 21st centuries, all of which revolve around courtship and marriage: as vehicles for character development and literary form; as highly ritualized structures of behavior; as allegories for larger social and political forces; as testing grounds for ideas about gender, sexuality, and identity. We will begin with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1818), which codified an ideal both of marriage and the genre of the novel as a harmonious reconciliation of opposing forces. From Austen's depiction of marriage as an idealized and civilizing influence enabling individual happiness, we'll investigate later works in which marriage often reveals itself, rather, as an illusion, a trap, or at least a decidedly mixed blessing, for women especially. We'll consider the novels' representation of marriage in relation to sexuality, adultery, bigamy, divorce, money, loneliness, love, betrayal, and feminism, among other topics. Final choices have not been made, but likely subsequent texts include Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (1862), Henry James' Portrait of a Lady (1881), Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth (1905), Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier (1915), Henry Green's Loving (1945), Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach (2007), and Ang Lee's film Brokeback Mountain (2005). Readings will also include literary criticism relating to our primary texts and to the marriage plot more generally (Ian Watt, Northrop Frye, Joseph Allen Boone), along with a selection from historical scholarship on the history of marriage by Lawrence Stone and Nancy Cott, among others. We will also consider, especially in relation to Brokeback Mountain, the role of marriage, both heterosexual and non-, in our own contemporary politics.

Since we will be reading a number of long novels, the reading load will be considerable and it will be crucial that you keep up. Assignments will likely include weekly reading quizzes, online blog postings, a midterm test, two 5-7 page papers, and a take-home essay final.

17383 1:00p-2:15p TR 3 cr.

In this class we'll examine some of the major schools of thought that have shaped critical reading practices over the past one hundred or so years. What assumptions determine the ways we read? What cultural narratives govern our understandings of human life? What role does interpretation have in the ways we view the world around us? And what role does literature play? Through our readings in psychoanalysis, Marxism, deconstruction and identity-based theories (centered on race, gender, and sexuality), we'll consider the theories that emerged in the past century and look to the ways they transform the ways we read. Students should expect a challenging semester. Course work will include weekly reading responses, a mid-term exam, and a final take-home exam.

17384 9:30a-10:45a TR 3 cr.

What defines an "original" in relation to an "imitation" or "copy"? Are copies always inferior? Can a copy ever become more valuable, authentic, or meaningful than its original? Are the categories of original and copy stable or objectively-defined, or are they invariably defined by context and perspective? This course will grapple with such questions, among others, as it considers a series of test cases from the history of criticism, theory, and interpretation, focusing primarily on the 20th century but including some crucial earlier predecessors. Our main test cases will include many (though likely not all) of the following possibilities: writing as a copy or imitation of speech, and the "signified" as a secondary effect of the "signifier" (Plato; Ferdinand de Saussure; J. L. Austin); mimesis or representation as imitation (Aristotle); interpretation or criticism as secondary or derivative (Friedrich Nietzsche, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Oscar Wilde); woman as "secondary" to man, and gender as performance/imitation (Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler); the colonized as an imitation or mimicry of the colonizer (Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha); the uncanny as repetition or doubling (Freud's "The Uncanny"); the cyborg or robot as copy of the human (Donna Haraway); translation and plagiarism in relation to an original (Walter Benjamin, Jonathan Lethem); the postmodern or simulacrum or pastiche as copy (Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard); the technologically-reproduced artwork as secondary copy of the single original (Walter Benjamin). Along with our reading of these critical and theoretical texts, we will also read and see some literary works and films that treat relevant issues, possibly including Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener;" Henry James' "The Real Thing;" P. K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" with Tony Scott's Blade Runner; photography by Cindy Sherman; and Good Copy Bad Copy: A documentary about the current state of copyright and culture.

These readings will, I think, change the way you think about literature, art, interpretation, and criticism; they will also be challenging and often very difficult, requiring serious attention, re-reading, and reflection. Assignments/requirements will include dedicated class participation (caveat: I call on people!) along with, probably, 4 short (3-4 page) papers; reading quizzes; a midterm test and final exam; and a final paper/ project.

17386 11:15a-12:30p TR 3 cr.

Restricted to Huttons Honors students who are English majors.

Critical Practices investigates the presuppositions behind the interpretation and production of literature. Is the purpose of literature essentially moral, a matter of depicting good and bad, right and wrong? Does it aim at making the reader feel intense emotions (love, jealousy, hope, despair) themselves previously intensely felt by the author? Should discussion of literature focus on the writer's intentions (and thus, must the reader know about history, about the time and place in which a text was written), or just what the work itself says? While we may also read some stories and a poem, we will mainly pursue these questions through a series of essays that belong to "theory," or "literary theory," as it is sometimes called. Literary theory begins as early as Plato (who was worried by the role poetry played in his own society) and continues up through the present day in such avatars as queer theory and post-colonial theory, as well as in debates concerning how legal texts are to be interpreted. Texts read in this course will thus include: Plato's Republic (excerpts), Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy (first half), Antonin Scalia's A Matter of Interpretation, and Eve Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet (excerpts). Because a secondary aim of this course is learning how to read various versions of "theory," students are required to keep up with the readings through weekly small assignments, and well-informed class participation enhances the final grade.

29883 TR 2:30p-3:45p, 3 cr, A&H

This course is designed to provide students with an introduction to intellectual and theoretical traditions that have shaped the understanding of literature, culture, and self in the modern era. The primary focus in this course will be on how to read theory. Rather than a broad survey of every school of critical thought, we will focus our discussions on the work and intellectual legacy of three of the most important and influential thinkers of the modern era: Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. Each unit will be devoted to a rigorous and in-depth investigation into the key works of these authors (including The Manifesto of the Communist Party, The German Ideology, and Capital; On Dreams, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and Three Essays on a Theory of Sexuality; and The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals). We will also examine the way important aspects of these thinkers were elaborated in twentieth century thought, tracing the development of materialist literary criticism after Marx, psychoanalytic criticism after Freud, and anti- (or post-) foundational criticism after Nietzsche. Students will write a number of formal reading responses and short three papers.

These readings will, I think, change the way you think about literature, art, interpretation, and criticism; they will also be challenging and often very difficult, requiring serious attention, re-reading, and reflection. Assignments/requirements will include dedicated class participation along with, probably, 4 short (3-4 page) papers; reading quizzes; a midterm test and final exam; and a final paper/ project.

26501 9:30a-10:45a TR (30 students) 3 cr.

This course will focus on fiction writers of the last twenty years whose works have addressed the culturally interrelated themes of loss and longing. Our emphasis will be not only on close examination of these emphases in fiction but on the larger cultural issues raised by these texts, such as: What constitutes significant loss and longing in our culture? What kinds of characters tend to experience them, and what do we make of these patterns? In what ways are these themes compatible with a stance of possibility and/or hope? Why are so many contemporary writers focused on these experiences? Does the pervasiveness of these themes constitute a difference from fiction of earlier periods?

Most of these writers have written at least three books. A secondary but real purpose of this course is to expose students to writers they might want to follow up on. To encourage this, one of the essay options in the course will direct students to read one other book by a given writer and to describe the fictional world that emerges from connecting the two.

Along with the novels, there will also be selected short stories interspersed along the way both to widen the range of authors and to provide some breathing space in a course that will require a good deal of reading. Individual short stories will be available through Oncourse and/or ereserve.

This reading list is relatively firm but not final or complete. Feel free to contact me (hedin@indiana.edu) in early December for a final list.

• Spiegelman, Maus I and Maus II
• Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies
• Price, Bloodbrothers
• Millhauser, selections from The Knife Thrower and Other Stories
• Munro, selections from Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
• Puchner, selections from Music through the Floor
• Strout, Abide with Me
• McCarthy, The Road
• Tilghman, "In a Father's Place"
• Biguenet, "Lunch with My Daughter"
• Nordan, The Sharpshooter Blues
• Mitchell, Black Swan Green
• Bloom, selections from A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You

17387 12:20p-1:10p (MW 60 students) 3 cr.

This course will focus on children's stories, ranging from fairy tales to contemporary fiction and film. It will emphasize the ways in which stories express and give shape to basic wishes and basic fears. We will also emphasize the strategies by which stories either convey or subvert prevalent cultural values. We will address such questions as: why do stories fascinate children (and others)? What is the relationship between the structure of stories and the emotions and values they convey? How does children's literature address central issues such as the relationship of adults to children, the ambiguities of growing up, and the experience of death? To what extent are stories gender-coded (and how might we respond when they are)? How has the notion of childhood changed over time and what do the changes imply culturally? What is the role of magic and the imagination in children's books and films? What should an adult (parent, educator) do about a children's story whose values are different from his or her own? Why is the analysis of a children's story a useful adult activity?

These issues will not be addressed in the abstract, but in the context of discussing specific, influential children's stories.

The class will meet twice a week in a mix of lecture, discussion, and occasional panel presentation and once a week in discussion sections. Students will be expected to have read the assigned material or to have viewed the assigned film by the first day on which it is considered in class. All films will be shown in Wylie 115. Students may either attend the screening or watch the film on their own. Students will also write two essays, a mid-term and final exam, and frequent quizzes or response papers. Additional, short readings may be assigned for discussion sections; they will be available on ereserve.

Course Materials (There may be a few changes in this list.)

• selected fairy tales
• Beauty and the Beast (Disney film)
• Decker, The Christian Mother Goose (selections)
• Carter, "The Tiger's Bride"
• Barrie, Peter Pan
• Graham, The Wind in the Willows
• Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit
• Lobel, Frog and Toad Are Friends
• Lobel, Frog and Toad Together
• Wilder, Little House on the Prairie
• The Wizard of Oz (film)
• White, Charlotte's Web
• Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat and other works
• L'Engel, A Wrinkle in Time
• Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are
• Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy
• Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia
• Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends (selections)
• Shrek (film)
• Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
• O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh
• Sexton, "Snow White" and "Cinderella"

29892 2:30p-3:45a TR 3 cr.

This course will focus on literature set in and around schools, and will take up the representation of education. Much of the most significant writing for your adults has dwelt on schooling and learning: the Harry Potter novels are only the most famous of recent examples. We are likely to read some texts about education, as well as literature of education: A Separate Peace, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, What I Was, American Born Chinese, The Golden Compass. While this is not a writing course, you should know that a high value will be placed on good (and correct) prose: writing assignments will probably include one short and two substantial papers. We are also likely to have quizzes; we'll certainly have two tests.

22191 1:00p-2:15p TR 3 cr.

During the past century the success of an author or book may be gauged by successful adaptation into film. While this process is no indication of a particular work's artistic value it does expand its potential reach and impact. Cinematic translation also (for better or worse) cues an audience on how particular novel or story might be read or understood. This raises a striking – and by no means easy – question. Does cinematic interpretation enhance or degrade the impact of a literary artifact? Does literary authorization for a film distract attention from what is possible in cinematic narrative? What happens when a film has successfully supplanted its source as a powerful articulator of a set of ideas or emotional structures? What judgments can we make about the potential and effect of a work that exists in two different media?

This course takes on these issues within the context of writing about African Americans and its translation onto America's motion picture screens. We will pay particular attention to the traffic between word and image that occurs when black life and thought becomes art and cultural artifact. Authors will likely include Fannie Hurst, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Walker and Chester Himes. Films by Ossie Davis, Carl Franklin, Douglas Sirk and Stephen Spielberg will provide the cinematic lenses through which African American writing is translated for popular audiences.

This course requires two papers (3-5 typewritten pages, double-spaced), six film quizzes, a final exam, one research team project, active and informed classroom participation and attendance.

9:30a-10:45a TR (15 students) 3 cr.

Edgar Allan Poe was either the inventor or a significant "tweaker" of many of the essential genres of mass and popular culture today: science fiction, detective fiction, the sensation tale, the media hoax, and the tale of horror. This seminar will conduct a series of investigations into Poe's achievement, and its ongoing significance for American mass culture. We will pursue these investigations in three directions at once: we will ask about the media culture of Poe's day, and how he manipulated it (and was manipulated by it); we will ask about legacies of Poe's work in the changed media landscapes through which his influence has passed (so, we'll look at remakes, abridgments, radio treatments, film and TV versions, websites, material culture, etc.); and we'll ask questions about the relation between art, its material instantiation, and its symbolic forms—a set of theoretical questions about mediation itself.

We'll read most of Poe's works, and write some critical responses. I will ask you to read some criticism, as well as other works in the tradition. The final project may be a critical essay of 25 pages, or it may take a different form (website, annotated edition, "anthology"). Everyone should expect to write criticism, explore media comparatively, and undertake research.

We'll be using a lot of resources online, and there will be books on reserve in the library. I will also upload a number of critical and theoretical texts. Our central old-fashioned book with be the Library of America's one-volume edition of Poe Poetry and Tales.

27606 2:30p-3:45a TR 3 cr.

This course will examine literature and political psychology. Concentrating on Shakespeare's most political plays—Antony and Cleopatra, Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2, Henry V, and Coriolanus—we will examine how the playwright anatomizes power politics and the dynamics of getting to be, being, or staying, "in charge." The seminar will spend considerable time looking at the historical conditions that organize Shakespeare's political thinking. Since it is an election year, we will also make connections between the politics of Shakespeare's day and our own, to see what Shakespeare can teach us about our own political psychology. Although we will conduct deep, complex and respectful political conversations with each other, the seminar will be run in a "non-partisan" manner and will remain focused on how Shakespeare himself understood and represented power dynamics. This course is NOT an introduction to literary study; it is designed only for upper-division students who have already satisfied their composition requirements and who have experience studying literature at an advanced level. Majors in Political Science, English, History, Psychology and other cognate fields are encouraged to apply, as are students of all political backgrounds and sensibilities.

17397 11:15a-12:05p M (105 students) 3 cr.

W103 is an introductory-level creative writing course in poetry and fiction designed for students who do not necessarily have experience in creative writing, but who possess a genuine desire to learn more about it. Through practice, assigned readings, lectures, and discussion, students will gain a better understanding of how poems and stories are made. Students will learn to read as a writer reads not only for what a text is saying but how a text is saying it, and apply that to the writing of original poems and stories.

The class meets three times a week, once on Monday for a lecture on the basic elements of poetry and fiction, and twice (Wednesday and Friday) in discussion sections for the close study of contemporary poetry and fiction assigned in lecture, and consideration of student work.

The course includes two exams, extensive in-class participation, and a culminating portfolio consisting of significantly revised original student work (poems, one short story and all drafts).

NOTE: This course does not satisfy the English composition requirement.

22385 11:15a-12:30p TR 3 cr.

AUTHORIZATION FROM INSTRUCTOR REQUIRED

This is a workshop course devoted to practicing the writing of literary fiction. In addition to submitting at least two short stories or novel chapters (approximately 35 fully drafted pages over the course of the semester), students will read, critique, and discuss one another's creative work as well as the course's texts. The class will also discuss working habits and the creative writing process, examine examples of classic and contemporary fiction, write a technical analysis, and learn related aspects of fictional craft and technique.

If you're interested in enrolling in this workshop, please send me an email containing the following information:

• a list of your previous creative writing courses along with the names of your past creative writing instructors, the semester in which you took each course, and the grades you received (if you enrolled in W203, please clarify whether the section was in fiction, poetry, or mixed genre);
• a representative sample of your best work in fiction (10-15 pages);
• any other information about yourself and/or your writing that you think relevant, such as your major and minor and other interests.

I'll do my best to notify qualified students in a timely manner.

Send your email to ardizzon@indiana.edu

Prerequisite: W103 or W203 and authorization from the instructor.

Texts:

• Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott.
• Fiction: a Pocket Anthology, 7th edition, edited by R. S. Gwynn.
• Making Shapely Fiction, by Gerald Stern.

26503 2:30p-4:45p TR (15 students) 3 cr.

ABOVE SECTION REQUIRES PERMISSION OF INSTRUCTOR.

This upper-level poetry workshop will focus on developing students' original work while reading and discussing what's being written and published in contemporary poetry. We will read multiple examples of work by contemporary poets, and we will explore the work both through class discussion and in our own writing.

In class, we will focus on an understanding of craft through close reading of poetry along with a few essays on poetics as well as through various writing exercises. In the workshop component of the class, we will focus on the experience of the poem in process: how craft elements are put to use, the ways in which the poem engages the form and its conventions, and what is wonderful and what might be improved about the poem.

You will be expected to hand in 10-12 new and original poems, several of which will be in response to prompts or developed from in-class exercises. All poems will go through several revisions, the experience of which you will discuss in a preface to the course's final portfolio of your original work. You will be expected to offer substantive written critique of peer work as well as participate actively in all workshops and class discussions. In preparation for class discussion, you will keep a writer's journal of reflections on course readings.

Possible course texts: A Best American Poetry anthology and/or American Poetry Now (ed. Ed Ochester); selected essays on poetics; and a few individual collections of poetry (possibilities include: Bowman's Notarikon; Calvocoressi's Apocalyptic Swing; Gay's Bringing the Shovel Down; Howe's What The Living Do; Levis' Winter Stars; Story's Post Moxie; Teitman's Litany for the City; Wicker's Maybe the Saddest Thing).

To apply for admission to the course, you will need to supply the following materials either electronically (MSWord or rtf or pdf docs to rrubinas@indiana.edu) or via hard copy to my campus mailbox (BH442/Romayne Rubinas Dorsey):

• 1. Your name, student ID# and a current email address
• 2. A brief letter outlining your interest in the course as well as your background in creative writing (you should have taken at least one of the following: W103 or W203; please let me know what semester you took these courses);
• 3. And most importantly, 5 pages of what you consider your best poetry.

I will notify you via email of my decision and copy the program secretary who will clear admitted students for registration.

22802 1:00p-2:15p TR 3 cr.

PREREQUISITE: Completion of ENG-W203 or W301 or W311 or by permission. Students who have not met the prerequisite may request permission by contacting the instructor: robledso@indiana.edu

This course will focus on the most important elements of craft in fiction. We will focus on reading like writers, examining both the content and the technique writers employ to create their fiction. We will also write a series of short exercises intended to stimulate new writing. Our goal will always be to push our understanding of fiction writing and encourage each other in class discussions.

Students seeking permission should send a brief email "cover letter" (it shouldn't be more than a paragraph or so) outlining previous writing courses as well as your interest in this course in particular, along with 10-20 pages of what you consider to be your best writing.

Please be sure to include your name, student id number, phone number in your email. (I ask for this information so the creative writing secretary can clear you in the system for registration).

I look forward to your materials and to an exciting course.

25096 1:00p-2:15p TR 3 cr.

Prerequisites: Completion of W203, W303, or permission of the instructor.

In this course, we will study the most prevalent derivative of poetry in America: rap music. We will explore the way emcees utilize traditional poetic form and device in an effort to better understand contemporary poetry and the place (if any) rap lyrics have in the poetic conversation. This is a complicated discussion, one that requires a clear understanding of poetic device and we will be using several texts in our exploration including Adam Bradley's Book of Rhymes, Alfred Corn's The Poem's Heartbeat, and John Murillo's Up Jump The Boogie. We will also study excerpts from Jay-Z's Decoded and the Yale Anthology of Rap. Students can expect weekly writing assignments, a presentation, and two exams. Though this is not a writing workshop, students will be expected to do some in-class writing.

Please note: The content and language in some rap music can be offensive. If you are easily offended by coarse or suggestive language, you might not want to take this class.

22386 9:30a-10:45a TR (15 students) 3 cr.

In this course you will deepen your study of the craft of writing fiction. You will read a few collections of short stories, and perhaps an anthology. A large part of the course will be in the workshop format, where you will read and discuss one another's work. Expect to write three to four stories during the semester, and also to provide written critiques on your colleagues' work. The aim is to deepen your understanding of the story form through writing, reading, and critiquing.

To apply, email to me (supadhya@indiana.edu) a work of fiction (no longer than 20 pages), as well as a brief essay (no more than a page) on the creative writing courses you've taken, with whom, and what makes you want to take W401. Send these as attachments. I'll make a decision on your application within days.

17572 2:30p-3:45p MW (15 students) 3 cr.

ABOVE SECTION REQUIRES PERMISSION OF INSTRUCTOR

This course is a workshop in writing poetry. Students will turn in a poem a week, which will be discussed in class. The poems will be formal exercises drawn from Wendy Bishop's Thirteen Ways of Looking for a Poem. Students will learn to work with accentual and syllabic meters, as well as to create contemporary versions of ancient forms such as sonnets and sestinas. No tests. No auditors. Students will distribute copies of their work to all members of the class.

Approval of the instructor is required for admission. To apply, submit 5 pages of poetry and a list of creative writing courses (including the name of their instructors) you've taken to me by e-mail attachment at least one week before your registration day. To improve your chances of getting a place in the workshop, submit your manuscript as soon as possible, since places will be filled as people apply. Those who register late should apply at the beginning of the registration period so that, if admitted, a place will be reserved for them in the class. No places will be saved for late registration.

Course Text: Wendy Bishop, Thirteen Ways of Looking for a Poem

1939 10:20a-11:20a D 3 cr.
Summer Session I (First Eight Weeks)

This course is a kind of interpretative bootcamp; by its close, you will have tried your hand at a broad range of literary analysis (formal, comparative, exegetical, typological, historical, theoretical, etc.) and developed a clearer sense of the kind of scholar you like to be. Inevitably, such an undertaking means grappling with the perennial question, what makes good art good? Our texts for this course will help us wrestle with this question by playing the devil's advocate with Keats' famous injunction "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all / Ye know on earth and all ye need to know." If truth is beauty, is fiction ugly? And isn't sincerity sometimes just lame? The challenge and the pleasure of this course will be accounting for our artistic judgments on these matters in the most persuasive, elegant and incisive way possible.

In addition to several short writing exercises/papers, this course will include 2 exams and at least one in-class presentation.

1938 11:30a-12:30p D 3 cr.
Summer Session II (Second Eight Weeks)

In "Adaptations," we will be interested in questions pertaining to "re-vision": rewritings, rescriptings, and retellings, and the various creative and technical challenges involved. We will be approaching this topic historically as well. Yes, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009) is a comic — and obvious — knock-off of a classic text; but was Jane Austen, too, engaged in re-writing (and revising) the patterns of existing tales? Why, in 1999, does Pride and Prejudice turn into Bridget Jones Diary, only to morph a decade later into a zombie tale? What made Francis Ford Coppola decide that Heart of Darkness, published in 1899, might be re-set in the Vietnam War? Why did Sophie Gee decide to rewrite in novel form, in 2007, a 300 year old poem?

Because this class is intended as an introduction to the English major, we will rely on the Bedford Glossary for our literary critical terms, and spend a good deal of time refreshing our collective memories as to the meaning of such terms as "irony" and "mood," the definition of "lyric," the difference between "speaker" and "narrator," and so on. We will also spend several days devoted to writing; students will participate in several peer reviews and in-class writing workshops.

Course Texts:
Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1712-17)
Sophie Gee, The Scandal of the Season (2007)
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones's Diary (1999)
Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009)
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899)
Francis Ford Coppola, dir., Apocalypse Now (1979)
Murfin and Ray, The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms
Select poems, essays, and other writings (Oncourse)

13757 12:40p-01:55p D 3 cr.
Summer Session I (First Six Weeks)

This course will examine social and political politics, familial relations, and competing versions of "history" in six of Shakespeare's Elizabethan plays. We will pay special attention to how social and economic systems organize familial and love relations, how conflicts between individuals and social codes are worked out (or not, depending on one's viewpoint), through strategies of genre, scapegoating, misrecognition, marriage, death and revenge. We will ground our reading of the plays in Renaissance social and cultural history, looking at the effects of female rule in a patriarchal culture, an emerging capitalist economy, and other factors that strongly influenced gender, family and class relationships. We will read several comedies, history plays, and tragedies; and look at how the choice, structure, and conventions of genre alter, disguise or reveal the debates and crises circulating in early modern England and the theatre.

Plays will include Richard II, 1 Henry IV, Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet. Requirements will be two papers, a midterm, attendance and participation, and a final exam.

13760 12:40p-1:55p D 3 cr.

This course is dedicated to exploring the revolution in art and literature that occurred in the early decades of the twentieth century. It will explore the historical causes behind the formation of the avant-garde (industrialization, the growth of the city, consumer culture, World War One, etc.) as well as the distinct innovations of avant-garde style (fragmentation, collage, punning, repetition, etc.). Throughout, we will pay careful attention to issues of medium and genre, comparing the unique formal features and transmission possibilities of, say, modernist fiction, poetry, painting, the manifesto, film, and song. At the same time, we will consider how each of these forms negotiate the great divide between high and low culture, appealing to different audiences, creating new publics, and responding to pressures from the culture industry at large.

Texts: F.T. Marinetti, Futurist Manifestos; T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Poems; John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love; Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

Requirements: Attendance, Two Reading Quizzes, One Research Paper

4664 11:15a-12:30p D 3 cr.
Summer Session I (First Six Weeks)

We will start by considering the category of "young adult literature," which describes books written for or about young adults and often poses some version of the question, "How and where do I fit in?" and "Who am I in relation to the larger world?" We will also consider the very notion of "young adult" and what that means to us today.

The publishing industry defines "young adult" as literature for readers ages 13-19, though readers of all ages enjoy and read these books. Recurring themes in a number of books categorized as "young adult" center around social issues and may include some or all of the following concerns: class, race, gender, sexual orientation, family, and identity in general. We will read somewhere around 10 YA books and compare and contrast ideas, characters, situations, modes, voices, language, etc. A random sampling is likely to include such classics as Catcher in the Rye; To Killing A Mockingbird, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, as well as at least one "edgier" work, like Paul Zindel's The Pigman, and perhaps a very contemporary novel like the deeply provocative Life Is Funny that explores disturbing social issues. Course requirements: something along the lines of two papers, or four to five briefer focused response papers that must meet university-level writing, at least one exam (maybe two), as well as quizzes, and, depending on class size, a class presentation. Class attendance, careful preparation, and regular participation are crucial to your success in the class.

Please note: This is not a pedagogy class for teachers. This is a literature class with a focus on critical interpretation and writing, and close, critical, thoughtful readings of the books.

Those who are registered in L391 will receive, at least a week before class, an email through Oncourse directing them to the course syllabus and detailed information about the first reading and writing assignments. There will be a short assignment due the first day of class, so please come prepared.

16386 1:00p - 2:15p TR

This course will focus on adventure novels published mainly in the nineteenth century in either Britain or the United States. Adventure will be broadly defined in this course. It will include journeys to Africa, to south sea islands, and to the future, as well as expeditions into various strata of society and the darkest recesses of the mind. A wide range of genres will be considered including, but not limited to, American frontier fiction, science fiction, urban fiction, the travel narrative, and young adult fiction. Along with frequent reading quizzes and regular class attendance and participation, there will be both long and short papers required. This class will require a lot of reading and writing, so be prepared to work if you sign up for it.

Final selection of course texts have not been made, but possible texts include:

Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans
Stoker, Dracula
Bellamy, Looking Backward
Haggard, She
Stevenson, Treasure Island
Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm

16387 9:30 - 10:45a TR

Course Description: This course will explore the evolution of the twentieth-century novel as it confronts the pains and promises of industrial modernization and all its effects. We will explore radical changes in the novel's form as it tries to address (1) the rise of technology and industry; (2) the expansion of the city; (3) the new mobility of rural life; (4) the violence of World War One; (4) the growth of the factory system and the laboring classes; (5) consumerism and mass culture; (6) colonial power and upheaval; (7) the new psychology and the transformation of gender/sexuality; (8) the politics of race and ethnicity. Throughout, we will track the development of modernism—as an aesthetic practice and a cultural experience—as it raises new problems and possibilities for personal and public identity. We will also focus on regional differences in modernist experience, exploring how different communities—local, national, international, etc.—confront or try to manage the experiences of modernization in relation to tradition. We will specifically explore the differences between American and British modernisms, looking at how their unique forms and concerns reflect significant differences in national history and culture. Always, though, we will try to maintain a double and thus critical vision, balancing the aggressive radicalism of the modern novel with its (often implied) promises of cultural wholeness and beauty.

Possible Texts: Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie; John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love; Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Richard Wright, Native Son

Course Requirements and Grading: This is a discussion-based course, so both attendance and participation are mandatory. In addition, you will be assigned two close reading exams and two analytical papers (6-7 pages each).

26480 11:15a - 12:05p MWF

We generally think of monsters as "out there" — Zombies, werewolves, Bigfoot. But as a literary figure the monster has much tell us about what's "in here. " The stories we tell ourselves and each other about monsters and the monstrous allow us to examine the dark sides of human behavior and psychology in a way that keeps them at a distance. Join us this semester in exploring the human face of the monster and the monstrous face of the human. We'll work across a series of texts, both historical and contemporary, and in a variety of literary genres—poetry, theater, fiction, reportage, comix (!) —that explore a variety of pertinent themes—among them the monster and the hero, the mind of the killer, the will to power, pleasure and excess—in our pursuit of the monstrous!

16390 11:15a - 12:30p TR

This course, the "gateway" to the English major, is designed to introduce you to some basic concepts in the analysis of literary texts and to encourage you to think creatively about individual works from different periods of English, American, and Canadian literature. Our emphasis will be on poetry, since shorter texts will give us a better opportunity to practice and hone our critical skills. To guide our discussion, we will focus (loosely) on issues of authorship. In the history of critical thinking about literature, authors have been praised and vilified, deconstructed and reconstructed. The texts that I have selected for the course (poems, novels, and a play) reflect, in varying degrees, a concern with the problems of authorship, with self-empowerment or self-entrapment through words, with writing and, ultimately, publication. Texts to be purchased will include Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, The Vintage Book of Modern American Poetry, a brand-new novel by the Canadian writer Katherine Govier, and Leonard Bernstein's and Lillian Hellman's Candide. Students are expected to attend a performance of Bernstein's Candide at the IU Opera. This class is intended as an introduction to literary interpretation. You will be evaluated on your ability to read all assigned texts thoroughly and thoughtfully; to share opinions of these texts in class; and to express your opinions in writing. I hope to create an environment in which you can acquire confidence in your argumentative abilities. Writing assignments will range from short blog postings to more formal essays. The final project for the course will involve primary research at the Lilly Library or in the IU Art Museum.

Required texts:

• McClatchy, ed. The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry
• Govier, The Printmaker's Daughter
• Whitman, Leaves of Grass (Penguin; it is essential that you use this edition)
• The libretto for Candide (will be provided)

16392 9:30 - 10:45a TR

This course serves an introduction to the practice of literary analysis and criticism. In this course you will strengthen your close reading skills and develop skills necessary for confident interpretation of poetry, drama, and fiction. Over the course of the semester we will consider why we read, how we read, how we evaluate literature, and how we might most effectively communicate our engagement with literature (both orally and in writing). To this end, we will read and discuss a range of literary works with a special focus on texts that consider what it means to be human. Our discussions might consider, among other things, the relationship of human beings to other forms of being and questions of subjectivity and interiority. Course readings will likely include selections from a range of poetry, short stories by Flannery O'Connor, Milton's Paradise Lost, Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, and Ishiguru's Never Let Me Go. Since class time will be structured largely by discussion of the assigned readings and writing workshops, regular attendance and vigorous participation will be expected. As this course is an intensive writing class, course grades will be based on the composition and revision of a series of short papers, writing logs, and a longer paper.

16393 2:30 - 3:45p TR

This is an introduction to literary interpretation that will pay particular attention to the variety of ways in which we can pay critical attention to literary texts, generally giving special emphasis to the significance of a work's formal properties. In the next 14 weeks, we hope to accomplish a number of related goals: to learn how to ask useful and meaningful questions of literary works; to learn to attend to our own (and others') response to literary works in ways that foster a fuller understanding of that work; to learn how to enter into critical discussion as an ongoing negotiation in which our appreciation of a literary work is complicated, rather than consolidated; and finally, to learn to write clearly essays in which we convincingly identify a particularly significant problem or set of problems posed by the work in question. Because this is an intensive writing course, and because one cannot learn interpretive skills except through writing, a good deal of writing is required. Because one cannot write interpretive essays without drawing on a significant base of reading, a relatively heavy reading load is also required.

16394 9:05a - 9:55a MWF
16391 10:10a - 11:00a MWF

PREREQUISITE: Completion of the English Composition requirement.

Open to majors and declared minors only.
This course teaches the skills required for studying literature with understanding and pleasure. It is designed to help students become perceptive readers equipped with the necessary vocabulary and techniques to interpret complex texts. The class is organized by genre: working first with poetry, we will identify and learn to analyze the basic building blocks of literary writing. We will then apply our interpretive tools to essays, stories, plays, and novels, and learn how to integrate close reading with large interpretations that span texts. We will attend to figurative language, literary devices and the conventions of various literary genres. We will also discuss how to situate literature in its historical context and how to use literary criticism. Our readings, drawn from a range of historical periods and from across the English-speaking world, will include Virginia Woolf, J.B. Priestly, Tom Stoppard, Joseph Conrad, Chinua Achebe, James Joyce, Anita Desai, Rachel Cusk, and a wide variety of poets.

31979 1:00 - 2:15p TR

This course investigate how thematic issues informed by history and culture are represented in literature and film through the intersecting lenses of gender, race, class, and sexuality. We will read selected works from the 19th century to the present, with an eye toward how women authors have variously represented women's economic (in)dependence and characterized the complex relationship between women's domestic and workplace lives and identities. We will be particularly concerned with the ways in which authors give voice to their own experiences and those of others and with how fictional and cinematic texts work through conflicting ideals of femininity, equality, and difference, often via the use of and/or the subversion of stereotypes. We will also explore the bases for our own connections to these works, as we cultivate critical reading and analytical writing skills.

Texts will include Bronte's Jane Eyre, Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," Woolf's A Room of One's Own, Hurst's Imitation of Life, Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Stockett's The Help, and the films I Walked With a Zombie and Imitation of Life (1943 and 1959). There will be short responses and a major paper, a midterm, and a final exam.

29949 7:15 - 9:45p M

1:00 - 2:15p TR

"A movie is not what it is about, but about how it is about it. "

With this intriguing statement, film critic Roger Ebert pushes us to focus on cinematic style. This is indeed what we will do as we study several celebrated Hollywood films. Although we will consider their themes, we will focus above all on their techniques: how they use editing, photography, art design, sound, and performance to create a world. We will analyze how each movie's style reflects not just the filmmaker's thinking, but also trends in American history and culture at large. Another key element of our course will be genre; we will examine the relation of style to various types of cinematic stories, including film noir, the musical, the Western, and the gangster thriller.

Beginning with the dazzling style of 1941's Citizen Kane, we will move chronologically through the following: Out of the Past, Singin' in the Rain, On the Waterfront, Rear Window, The Searchers, Imitation of Life (1959 version), North by Northwest, Bonnie and Clyde, Do the Right Thing, and American Splendor. The Monday night session will be the screenings. The Tuesday-Thursday class will emphasize discussion. Readings will include the original novels of Out of the Past and The Searchers; selections from Harvey Pekar's graphic novel series American Splendor; and various articles on our set of films. Required writing will entail some brief, informal reflections; a short paper analyzing a scene (3 pages); and a longer paper (5 pages) on a topic of your own choosing. There will be a midterm and a final exam.

26487 2:30p - 03:45p TR

One of the most popular late medieval genres was the dream vision. In this course, we will read and discuss a range of visionary literature, including philosophical meditations, social allegories, spiritual revelations, and courtly visions. Over the course of the semester we will consider the psychological and textual elements of dreamscapes, the interpretation of dreams, the authority of knowledge gained in dreams and visions, and the social uses of dreams, visions, and allegory. Course texts will include Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, "The Dream of the Rood, " The Romance of the Rose, Chaucer's dream visions (Book of the Duchess, House of Fame, Parliament of Fowls), Pearl, Piers Plowman, The Shewings of Julian of Norwich, The Book of Margery Kempe, and selections from medieval and modern dream theory. Middle English texts will be read in the original language; all other texts will be read in modern English translations. Course requirements include committed attendance, engaged participation, two exams, and two papers.

29513 11:15a - 12:30p TR

This course has two aims: first, to promote an understanding of the major genres that characterize Elizabethan poetry (introduced by Sir Philip Sidney in his Defense of Poesy) together with the historical and cultural contexts that gave rise to them; secondly, to foster an appreciation of the values, conventions, and techniques in the poetry that represents those major genres. To these ends, we will examine a range of poetry produced during this period within each major genre, beginning with examples of pastoral poetry and including examples of Ovidioan-mythological poetry, complaints, lyrics (including some major and minor sonnet cycles), and satires, and concluding with heroic poetry, as exemplified by Book I of Spenser's Fairie Queene.

Because much of the work of this course will be carried on through class discussion and other class activities, regular attendance and participation will be required. Also required will be a series of informal "first pass" writing exercises, two formal papers, unannounced quizzes, and a final, comprehensive exam.

16411 9:30a - 10:45a TR

We think of the battle between good and evil as the very essence of drama, the conflict that makes it exciting and draws us into its view of the world. As soon as we read Shakespeare's plays, however, we realize the many nuanced possibilities between the hero, at one end, and the villain, at the other. In this course, we will focus on the ways in which those seemingly opposed figures turn into versions of each other.

In order to orient our explorations, we will focus on three categories of people at various points on the social hierarchy: rulers, foreigners, and women. Each of these figures can appear to be either a hero or a villain, depending on the perspective from which we view them; each will tell us something different about the meanings of morality, power, and manipulation in Shakespeare's time and our own. To that end, we will also think about the shifting social meanings of these plays over time: can we really still read The Merchant of Venice or The Taming of the Shrew as comedies? How relevant are the monarchic mind games of Richard II and Henry IV to contemporary media?

We will read two plays each on rulers (Richard II, Henry IV) ; foreigners (Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice) ; and women (The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado about Nothing), along with relevant criticism. Requirements for the course will include regular attendance and active participation; two formal papers; an oral presentation or performance; several short, informal writing assignments; and a final exam. We will also have several viewings of films or plays scheduled outside of regular class hours.

16412 11:15a - 12:05p MWF

This course will examine some examples of Shakespeare's late tragedies, comedies and romances as a body of literature that wields a great deal of present influence and that supplies us with rich and compelling evidence of early modern English culture. We will contemplate Shakespeare's take on such pressing matters as women's rights, the influence of the classics, the state of the nation, the justice of revenge, racial and religious prejudice, sexual freedom, and the dangers and pleasures of theatrical performance.

In addition to undertaking careful readings of the plays, we will read and critique some representative secondary criticism. Each member of the class will complete at least two in-class presentations, one on a play and another on a critical essay, both of which involve a written component. The course will culminate in a substantial research essay.

Plays: Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure All's Well That Ends Well, Hamlet, Othello, The Tempest.

29515 2:30p - 3:45p TR

Close study of Milton's major poems—Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. Emphasis will be on the special relation of meaning to method in Milton's poetry, with attention to the historical context of his religious, social, and political ideas. We'll also read and discuss a number of Milton's shorter and earlier poems—his sonnets and "Lycidas, " for example—and some of his prose writings, such as Areopagitica, his tract defending the freedom to publish, since the prose texts cast light on his major poetic achievements. There will be two papers, an hour exam, and a comprehensive final, along with other assignments of a more occasional sort.

29517 11:15a - 12:30P TR

This course will devote most of its attention to a very brief and important period (the reign of Charles II) and pay attention primarily to comedy and satire. In doing so, we will take more seriously than is often done the intense relationship between a particular literary genre (drama) and a moment of decisive transformation in the political state (the restoration and completion of traditional monarchy and the rise of the modern political state). Because of this double focus, students will be expected to read many plays, and also to read supplementary historical readings. Students will be responsible for one short review essay, written in conjunction with a group presentation about a third of the way through the semester; and one long paper by semester's end. There will be attention to other genres and periods, but they will be supplementary to our main consideration, which will be focused on a richer understanding of the complexities of the Restoration culture of satiric comedy, and its various consequences and legacies.

29519 9:30a - 10:45a TR

When it comes to sexuality and sexual mores, the Victorian era in Britain is typically associated with modesty, reticence, evangelical Christian moral standards, and the repression or concealment of desire. This is not completely incorrect: it is true that after the more free-wheeling eighteenth century, new codes of public propriety, discretion, and virtue arose in Britain. Yet as many scholars have demonstrated, those who lived and wrote in the Victorian period in Britain can be understood to be obsessed with sexuality and continually thinking about this topic. Even when sexuality appears to be repressed, forbidden, or censored, then, it is often, in fact, front and center as a topic. And you don't have to look too far beneath the surface, or between the lines, to find evidence of all kinds of sexualities and desires, including kinky or "perverse" ones, in Victorian art and writing. In this course, we'll read a range of fascinating Victorian British literature – fiction, poetry, essays, plays, diaries – with these topics and questions in mind, along with visual materials (paintings and photography), journalism, and examples of early "sexology" or the scientific study of sexuality. Topics and issues considered will include codes of behavior and representation (modesty, propriety, reticence, forms of encoded language), sexuality as subtext, sexual purity campaigns, virginity and chastity, children and sexuality, prostitution and the trope of the "fallen woman, " moral panics, "inversion" or homosexuality, flogging and sadomasochism, masturbation, attitudes towards marriage (including adultery and bigamy), and lesbian vampires. We will (caveat!) visit IU's Kinsey Institute to view some Victorian erotica and pornography. (If you take the class you should be prepared to confront some frank depictions of sexuality—as well as many elaborately disguised ones.)

I haven't yet made final choices about readings, but they will include as many of the following as I can fit into the syllabus: novels like Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (file under: lesbian vampires), Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray; poetry by Robert Browning ("My Last Duchess, " "Prophyria's Lover'), Alfred Tennyson (In Memoriam), Christina Rossetti ("Goblin Market"), Dante Gabriel Rossetti ("Jenny"), George Meredith ("Modern Love"), Augusta Webster ("Circe"), Algernon Swinburne ("Anactoria", "Laus Veneris", "The Leper") ; George Bernard Shaw's play about prostitution, Mrs. Warren's Profession; Arthur Munby and Hannah Cullwick's diaries chronicling their kinky master-servant relationship; prose, essays, and journalism by John Ruskin (Sesame and Lilies), feminist activist Josephine Butler (Social Purity), W.T. Stead's explosive 1885 expose of child prostitution "Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon; " excerpts from early sexology and scientific writing on sex by John Addington Symonds ("A Problem of Modern Ethics"), Havelock Ellis ("Inversion"), Sigmund Freud ("Infantile Sexuality" and "A Child is Being Beaten") ; and finally, we'll consider paintings – of "fallen women, " among other topics – by such artists as Dante Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and Augustus Egg. We will also read excerpts from 20th-century works of criticism, scholarship, and theory, including Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality, Steven Marcus's The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Englad, Judith Walkowitz's City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London, Elaine Showalter's Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siecle, and Gayle Rubin's "Thinking Sex."

Note that the reading load will be considerable and you will need to keep up. Assignments will likely include: a 5-7 page midterm paper; a 8-10 page final paper, regular in-class reading quizzes, an in-class midterm, and a number of 1-page response papers. Dedicated and consistent participation in class discussions will also be expected.

24358 2:30p - 3:45p TR

Two theses have dominated eighteenth-century studies for the last half-century or so: one having to do with the "rise of the novel" and one having to do with the sway of "Enlightenment culture, " in all of its philosophical, political, and scientific dimensions. Effectively, though, these theses have been one and the same. To what extent do novels work to enlighten and to what extent to they resist enlightenment? Using Kant's seminal essay "What is Enlightenment? " as a framework, these questions will guide our investigations into five landmark works. Topics will include the relation of the novel to the epic, the rise of the bourgeoisie, the "public sphere" hypothesis, the waning (?) of Providence, and the concept of the uncanny, among many others.

Required Texts: Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, ed. Michael Shinagel (Norton) Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, eds. John Bender and Simon Stern (Oxford) Denis Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, trans. David Coward (Oxford) Matthew Lewis, The Monk, ed. Howard Anderson (Oxford) Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, ed. James Kinsley and John Davie (Oxford)

Assignments will include mandatory attendance and class participation, reading quizzes, a long (10-page) paper, and a final exam.

29521 2:30 - 3:45p TR

The years after the Civil War saw the United States expand into an imperial superpower. It was a period that saw rapid industrialization, increasing social and inequality, and the disenfranchisement of large groups of voters, especially women and those so imperfectly freed by the war, the former slaves. The many movements and -isms that proliferated after 1865 are hard to represent in one course, so much so that I have chosen to introduce a somewhat more local emphasis, selecting writers that are connected to Indiana or the Midwest. Our readings will range from poetry by James Whitcomb Riley and Paul Laurence Dunbar to novels by Theodore Dreiser, Lew Wallace, and Gene Stratton-Porter. Some of our classes will take place at the Lilly Library, which has unparalleled archival holdings related to the writers we are studying. Requirements include two papers and a final research project, based on materials either at the Lilly Library or the IU Art Museum.

29523 1:00p - 2:15p TR

In her acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, Toni Morrison invited her audience to recognize the extraordinary power of narrative: "Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the moment it is being created." This course uses Morrison's invitation as a springboard for considerations and analyses of radical narratives in later twentieth-century and contemporary American fiction. Certainly, over the course of the semester, we will study some canonical American authors, their literary works, and the historical and cultural contexts that informed the texts. But you will also read a few works that may not be familiar to you. Indeed, a key objective of this class is to question the critical narratives that we use to define this period, especially the presumed dividing lines between ethnic American and postmodern literature (which has long been seen as a production of white, male writers). For example, while many people would quickly name Thomas Pynchon as a postmodern author, Morrison is not often recognized in this category. Yet the narrative strategies of Beloved are remarkably similar to those used in The Crying of Lot 49. Don DeLillo and Karen Tei Yamashita are both interested in the conflicts produced by large crowds, alienation, and huge, unexplainable disasters. What happens, then, when we think about a combination of race, gender, sexuality, class, region and their articulations through the formal play that characterizes postmodern and contemporary literature?

The above question brings me to the second goal of this course, which is to encourage you to think about intersections of radical literary forms and their content. All of the texts in our syllabus mediate and play with the definition of "literature" and "the novel" to explore postmodern and contemporary experience. How do the conditions of post-60s America – which might be defined as broadly as the alienation of white suburbia, the experience of transnational tourism, or the experience of Asian immigrant heritage – require new explorations of literature as a multiply-mediated form, exemplified by examples such as Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior, Shaun Tan's graphic novel, The Arrival, and Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

The final objective of this course centers on fine-tuning your skills as a critical reader and writer. You'll have the opportunity to practice critical analysis in written assignments, class discussions, presentations, and of course, formal papers. While you don't need to be experts on U.S. history, we will discuss key historical, cultural, and literary events in order to situate the works we study in their contexts. We will examine the ways in which all of these texts might be responding to, commenting on, and even working against some of our dominant cultural assumptions. Although we will read the texts in rough chronological order, at times, we will break chronology to read the texts in comparative, thematic clusters. In our discussions, we will think critically about these authors' negotiations of a wide range of subjects—including notions of racial, ethnic, cultural, gendered, and sexual identities; the phenomena of globalization and transnationalism; the telling of unspeakable stories; and the connection between narrative and the self.

26491 4:00 - 5:15p TR

In this course we will explore the literary and cultural activity of scientists who have combined employment in the sciences with active writing careers. These writer-scientists have created a distinct literary genre that is generally called "popular science" or "science popularization. " A good definition for the genre is: non-fiction prose about scientific knowledge for non-specialist but interested audiences. The form is distinctly didactic but its practitioners also seek to inspire as well as inform, to produce narratives that entertain while demonstrating science's intimate imbrication in the way our world is ordered. The overall aim is to produce a scientific literacy that is reliably informed, in which the knowledge gained is valued as the foundation of liberal education.

We will be concerned with some of the questions raised by this activity. Is the knowledge shared by science writing an accurate reflection of science? What are the conventions that make popular science a distinct form of writing? How does the genre make its case for science as a vital part of the social/political world we inhabit? What do we make of the role that celebrity can play in the advocacy of a writer-scientist? What is the relationship between science popularization and science fiction?

For the sake of disciplinary and narrative coherence we will focus on authors in the fields of astronomy, biology, physics and cosmology. The course will likely include James D. Watson, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Neil de Grasse Tyson, C.P. Snow, and Brian Greene as our representative writer-scientists. Please note that while the course number indicates a focus on American prose science is an international affair; we will, therefore, range across national boundaries in terms of the authors we read.

During the semester we will also sample popular science activity in other media. To this end we will screen episodes or clips from television programs, documentaries and filmed lectures from a variety of sources.

This course requires two papers (3-5 typewritten pages, double-spaced), two exams, one research team project, active and informed classroom participation and attendance.

24675 10:10a - 11:00a MWF

PREREQUISITE: L202 with grade of C- or better. NOTE: The English Department will strictly enforce this prerequisite. Students who have not completed L202 with a grade of C- or better will have their registration administratively cancelled. This section for English majors only.

[In times like these, ] art forms, like "tragedy" or "comedy" or "satire" would be treated as equipments for living, that size up situations in various ways and in keeping with correspondingly various attitudes. The typical ingredients of such forms would be sought. Their relation to typical situations would be stressed. Their comparative values would be considered, with the intention of formulating a "strategy of strategies, " the "over-all" strategy obtained by inspection of the lot.

— Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form
How does one form a strategy of strategies for the critical interpretation of texts? What can or should be the principles underlying this "equipment for living"? What beliefs about text underlay these principles, and what assumptions accompany those beliefs? What bearing does critical interpretation have on larger questions of identity, agency, textuality, and human society when the definitions of those terms are contingent – uncertain?

As English majors and minors, you have already begun shaping your understanding of what it means to critically read, write, and interpret. English 371 encourages you to shape that understanding even more, by involving you in the study and practice of criticism. This course does not emphasize the literary or historical interpretation of specific texts; rather, it emphasizes the study of landmarks in critical and theoretical practice, as well as the development of your ability to read theoretical texts for themselves. It will provide you with an introduction to some of the intellectual concepts and methods that have shaped contemporary understandings of rhetoric, literature, culture, and text.

In a single course, we cannot cover every school of thought, every intellectual movement, or every theory vital to criticism. So, we will focus our readings and our discussions on a finite set of critical problems or dilemmas (some would call them paradoxes) whose intertextual connections are, indeed, infinite: agent/cy, anti/signification, text/uality, re/presentation. Whether or not you think of yourself as a theorist, most critical work is often done to meet real demands in real contexts. So, we will also focus on two films, a graphic novel, some short fiction, and other web, print, and video texts that will serve as "cases" for us to apply what we have learned, considering the role of critical practices in raising and answering questions about incarceration, digitality, feminism, globalism, ecology, relocation, and even war. We will unpack them for their rhetorical, philosophical, and practical dimensions. We will learn first-hand how very deep and complex Burke's "forms" and "strategies" can be. We will attain new levels of understanding. We will read. We will write. We will view. It will be glorious!

Course texts will include The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, Third Edition (by Murfin and Ray, 2009), The Complete Persepolis (by Marjane Satrapi, 2007), and a coursepack of readings. I will also expect you to liberally and regularly consult the Oxford English Dictionary (which is available online via the IU Libraries). Rigorous and daily reading will be expected. Two film viewings will be scheduled.

16413 4:00p - 5:15p TR

Storytelling, recounting, giving account, accounting for, narrating, narrativizing: these are all names we give to an activity we encounter at every turn. It operates on diverse registers, from the literary to the everyday, from private conversation to public discourse. It takes a multiplicity of forms and cuts across all disciplines. Different professions have different protocols for its use, from highly flexible and informal and to highly structured and technical. Indeed, narrative seems so pervasive in our lives we take them for granted; in classes and workplaces, our interactions are mediated by the institutional narratives we have internalized and enact as "rules of the game." Often these rules are tacit, yet success often depends on practitioners being able to use or change them to their advantage.

So what is narrative and what are its uses? How do we understand ourselves and shape our lives through narrative? How do the uses of narrative relate to the forms it takes and the mediums it inhabits, and how do messages translate across genres and mediums? What relations of power inform the narratives and language games we participate in? In what ways can narrative in its diverse forms be manipulated for better or worse? How do we become responsible users of narrative? In what ways might narrative forms enable or limit our perceptions of, and our potential for relating to other people, species, and the world?

In this course, students will have the opportunity to explore these questions and related ones they bring to the conversation. Some areas of inquiry are: narrative and the making of the self, literary uses of narrative; concepts for formal and structural analysis; postmodern and poststructuralist rethinkings; narrative in institutions and public discourse; metanarrative or narrative that theorize the production of narrative; media, audiences, and the ethics/politics of narrative.

Class discussions will move between theory and practice: In addition to Richard Kearney's On Stories: Thinking in Action and a theory reader to be decided. Literary texts may include Moshin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist; Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony; and Gene Leun Yang's American Born Chinese (a graphic novel).

There will be numerous in-class activities designed to provoke lively conversational inquiry into issues of narrative. Most of the activities will involve facilitators, and students should expect to sign up for 2 - 3 activities. (The third activity may be a poster session open to the public). For each of these activities, facilitators will submit 1-page write-ups in advance of the activity and participants will submit 1-paragraph follow-up reflections. In addition, there will be two essays, one about 5 pages in length focusing on the use of narrative theory in analyzing textual evidence; the other about 7 pages in length incorporating research into a theoretically informed argument.

29525 2:30 - 3:45p TR

Course Description: This course is dedicated to exploring the revolution in art and literature that occurred in the early decades of the twentieth century. It will explore the historical causes behind the formation of the avant-garde (industrialization, the growth of the city, consumer culture, World War One, etc.) as well as the distinct innovations of avant-garde style (fragmentation, collage, punning, repetition, etc.). Throughout, we will pay careful attention to issues of medium and genre, comparing the unique formal features and transmission possibilities of, say, modernist fiction, poetry, painting, the manifesto, film, and song. At the same time, we will consider how each of these forms negotiate the great divide between high and low culture, appealing to different audiences, creating new publics, and responding to pressures from the culture industry at large.

Possible Texts: Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray; F.T. Marinetti, Futurist Manifestos; T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land; Ezra Pound, Personae; H.D., Selected Poems; John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love; Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Kenneth Fearing, The Bog Clock; Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust

Course Requirements and Grading: This is a discussion-based course, so both attendance and participation are mandatory. In addition, you will be assigned two close reading exams and two analytical papers (6-7 pages each).

21586 11:15 - 12:30p TR

This course will focus on fiction writers of the last twenty years whose works have addressed the culturally interrelated themes of loss and longing. Our emphasis will be not only on close examination of these emphases in fiction but on the larger cultural issues raised by these texts, such as: What constitutes significant loss and longing in our culture? What kinds of characters tend to experience them, and what do we make of these patterns? In what ways are these themes compatible with a stance of possibility and/or hope? Why are so many contemporary writers focused on these experiences? Does the pervasiveness of these themes constitute a difference from fiction of earlier periods?

Most of these writers have written at least three books. A secondary but real purpose of this course is to expose students to writers they might want to follow up on. To encourage this, one of the essay options in the course will direct students to read one other book by a given writer and to describe the fictional world that emerges from connecting the two.

Along with the novels, there will also be selected short stories interspersed along the way both to widen the range of authors and to provide some breathing space in a course that will require a good deal of reading. Individual short stories will be available through Oncourse and/or ereserve.

This reading list is relatively firm but not final or complete. Feel free to contact me (hedin@indiana.edu) in early December for a final list.

• Spiegelman, Maus I and Maus II
• Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies
• Price, Bloodbrothers
• Millhauser, selections from The Knife Thrower and Other Stories
• Munro, selections from Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
• Puchner, selections from Music through the Floor
• Strout, Abide with Me
• McCarthy, The Road
• Tilghman, "In a Father's Place"
• Biguenet, "Lunch with My Daughter"
• Nordan, The Sharpshooter Blues
• Mitchell, Black Swan Green
• Bloom, selections from A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You

26493 2:30p - 3:45p TR

This course offers an introduction to the fundamentals of queer studies. We will address pertinent topics such as the history of sexuality (primarily in the United States) ; the mythology of the Stonewall riots; the rise of gay marriage; intersections between sexuality and race; the urban/rural/suburban divide; and recent "It Gets Better" campaigns. Familiarity with gender/sexuality studies or LGBTQ studies is not presumed, and the class begins on an even playing field. Along the way we will cover:

• Sexual inverts in 1890s Memphis
• Drag shows in 1960s Kansas
• Lesbian pulp fiction from the 1950s
• Gay Liberation movements in the 1970s
• AIDS activism in the 1980s
• marriage equality campaigns from the 1990s
• Gaga now

16416 11:15a - 12:05p MW

This term we will examine children's literature from three interrelated perspectives: The Instrumental, The Conceptual, and The Literary. When looking at texts for children instrumentally, we consider ways in which literature promotes linguistic and other cognitive abilities central to children's development, from distinguishing English speech sounds ("Hop on pop. Stop! You must not hop on pop!") to the basics of conversation ("'Do you like this hat?' 'No, I do not. I do not like that hat.'") and narrative ("Once upon a time..."). Looking at texts for children conceptually, we consider (often very much to our benefit as adults) how they engage philosophical questions and social structures. When we consider children's literature on literary terms, we discover the roots of verbal pleasure and imagination.

This course begins with picture books (lots of Sandra Boynton, lots of Dr. Seuss, and several others) and easy readers, moves on to folk and fairy tales and fables, then nursery rhymes and poetry for children. Rather than cover all genres of children's literature, we will focus on animal stories and fantasies, elements of which are present in the picture books, folk tales, fables, and poetry we read early on, but which are represented by literature for older children in the following texts: for fantasy, Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland; Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth; Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time; Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book; and, for animal stories, Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit; Kenneth Grahame, A Wind in the Willows; A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh; and Robert Lawson, Rabbit Hill.

Here is a list of recommended texts: Maria Tatar (ed.), The Classic Fairy Tales (Norton, 1999) 0393972771 ($17.03); Gillian Avery (ed.), The Everyman Anthology of Poetry for Children (Dent, 1994) 0679436340 ($15.95); Aesop, and Laura Gibbs (trans.), Aesop's Fables (Oxford World's Classics) 0199549756 ($7.94); Lewis Carroll, and Donald J. Gray (ed.), Alice in Wonderland, 2nd ed., (Norton, 1992) 0393958043 ($12.76); Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth (Knopf, 2011) 0375869034 ($16.32); Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book (HarperCollins, 2010) 0060530945 ($7.99); Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time (Square Fish, 2007) 0312367546 ($6.99); Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Warne, 2006) 0723258732 ($6.99); Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (Alladin, 1989) 068971310X ($6.99); A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh (Dutton, 2009) 0525477683 ($13.59); and Robert Lawson, Rabbit Hill (Puffin, 2007) 0142407968 ($5.99). The maximum total cost of books is $118.54. It will be necessary to purchase the first four texts listed; otherwise, any versions of the texts will do, and I assume that most members of the class will already own a copy of one or more of the required texts.

Coursework will include three medium-sized essays (5-8 pages), midterm and final examinations, and occasional assignments.

21876 1:00p - 2:15p MW

This course will focus primarily on novels loosely defined as "young adult" and secondarily on works of adult fiction that have adolescents/young adults as central characters. Examples of the first category: The Hunger Games (first volume), Enders Game,The Golden Compass, I Am the Cheese, King Dork, Holes, and one of the Harry Potter books. Examples of the second (mainly short stories) will be: Bloom, "Hold Tight"; Shepard, "Trample the Dead, Hurdle the Weak"; Biguenet, "Lunch with My Daughter"; Millhauser, "Claire de Lune" and "Sisterhood of the Night; Puchner, "Essay #3: Leda and the Swan."

In addition to interpretive essays, students will have the option of writing a (brief) short story or autobiographical story with a young adult at its center. This option will require a substantial afterward in which the writer will describe the choices he or she made in writing the story.

This reading list is neither final nor complete. There will be a lot of reading required. Students may contact me in early December for a final reading list (hedin@indiana.edu).

29950 M Screening: 7:15-10:00pm; Class Meetings TR 2:30-3:45pm.

Starting in the 1930s, we will study several celebrated films associated deeply in one way or another with Great Britain and its former empire. Most of these movies were, in fact, products of the British film industry. Certainly we will attend to the films' themes and ideologies, noting in particular what these imply about British national identity. But we will also focus on their techniques—how they use editing, photography, art design, sound, and performance—as well as on their genres (e. g., thriller, musical, melodrama, docudrama).

The specific films and their directors: The Thirty-Nine Steps and Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock); Brief Encounter (David Lean); The Red Shoes (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger); The Third Man (Carol Reed); The Innocents (Jack Clayton); A Hard Day's Night (Richard Lester); The Crying Game (Neil Jordan); The Piano (Jane Campion); and The Queen (Stephen Frears).

The Monday night session will be the screenings. The Tuesday-Thursday class will emphasize discussion. Readings will include the original novels of The Thirty-Nine Steps and Rebecca; Graham Greene's novelization of his screenplay for The Third Man; Henry James's novella The Turn of the Screw (the basis of The Innocents); and various articles. Required writing will entail some brief, informal reflections; two short papers analyzing a scene (each 3 pages); and a longer paper (6 pages) on a topic of your own choosing. There will be a midterm and a final exam.

22191 1:00 - 2:15p TR

During the past century the success of an author or book may be gauged by successful adaptation into film. While this process is no indication of a particular work's artistic value it does expand its potential reach and impact. Cinematic translation also (for better or worse) cues an audience on how particular novel or story might be read or understood. This raises a striking – and by no means easy – question. Does cinematic interpretation enhance or degrade the impact of a literary artifact? Does literary authorization for a film distract attention from what is possible in cinematic narrative? What happens when a film has successfully supplanted its source as a powerful articulator of a set of ideas or emotional structures? What judgments can we make about the potential and effect of a work that exists in two different media? This course takes on these issues within the context of writing about African Americans and its translation onto America's motion picture screens. We will pay particular attention to the traffic between word and image, silence and sound that occurs when black life and thought becomes art and cultural artifact. Authors will likely include James Baldwin, Walter Mosley, Lorraine Hansberry, and Chester Himes. Films by Ossie Davis, Carl Franklin, Douglas Sirk and Stephen Spielberg will provide the cinematic lens through which African American writing is translated for popular audiences. This course requires two papers (3-5 typewritten pages, double-spaced), six film quizzes, a final exam, one research team project, active and informed classroom participation and attendance.

16577 1:00p - 2:15p TR

PREREQUISITE: W203 or equivalent. Requires permission of instructor.

This is a workshop course devoted to practicing the writing of literary fiction. In addition to submitting at least two short stories or novel chapters (approximately 35-40 fully drafted pages over the course of the semester), students will read, critique, and discuss one another's creative work as well as the course's texts. The class will also discuss working habits and the creative writing process, examine examples of classic and contemporary fiction, write a technical analysis, and learn related aspects of fictional craft and technique.

If you're interested in enrolling in this workshop, please send me an email containing the following information:

• a list of your previous creative writing courses along with the names of your past creative writing instructors, the semester in which you took each course, and the grades you received;
• a representative sample of your best work in fiction (10-15 pages);
• any other information about yourself and/or your writing that you think relevant, such as your major and minor and other interests.

I'll do my best to notify qualified students in a timely manner.

Send your email to ardizzon@indiana.edu

Prerequisite: W103 or W203 and authorization from the instructor.

Texts:
Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott.
Fiction: a Pocket Anthology, 7th edition, edited by R. S. Gwynn
Making Shapely Fiction, by Gerald Stern.

27018 11:15a - 12:30p TR

This class, an advanced poetry workshop and reading seminar, assumes that its members are already practicing poets with a grounding in the foundational techniques of poetry-writing. We will work in a spirit of shared experiment, hoping to push our inquiries into this art form further. Readings and assignments will investigate different impulses—formal, textural, tonal, thematic—in contemporary American and transatlantic poetry.

Reading list: Alphabet by Inger Christensen, One With Others by C. D. Wright, Sight Map by Brian Teare, Recyclopedia by Harryette Mullen, and Traffic and Weather by Marcella Durand.

26520 1:00p - 2:15p TR

PREREQUISITE: Completion of W231 or permission of instructor (if you're interested, please ask!)

How does the design of a document—the material and visual shaping of text on a page—contribute to its effectiveness in achieving its purposes? Likewise, how do poor design choices prevent documents from accomplishing their aims? How are design elements such as page layout, font, spacing, size, proximity, color, and contrast central to our visual literacy—our ability to interpret, understand, and make use of information based on how it is physically structured for our reading?

These are the questions we'll be exploring as we look at a range of different documents, especially (but certainly not limiting ourselves to) those that we would call "professional writing"—reports, proposals, process and procedure descriptions, brochures, announcements, online documents such as web pages, and the like. In addition to essential concepts and theories of document design, we will learn how design choices have very real, specific consequences for how persuasive texts are in the purposes they seek to accomplish. This working knowledge of document design you'll develop is increasingly expected of people who write in their various workplaces. To that end, your work will provide you with a portfolio of various texts that you've created to help you demonstrate your abilities as both a writer and a designer of professional documents.

We'll be completing various short writing and design assignments, as well as a semester project, which will be the writing and design of a longer document needed by one of our many community service organizations.

This course is designated as fulfilling credit toward the Public & Professional Writing concentration within the English major and is highly recommended for those pursuing this concentration. (Please note, however, that interested students from any major are welcome.)

A final important note: this class will be held amidst the technological awesomeness of one of the university's newest classrooms, the incredibly comfortable "Collaboration Café, " located in Cedar Hall 102.

16579 9:30a - 10:45a TR

PREREQUISITE: Completion of the English Composition requirement.

N. B.: This IW course requires students to perform community service (total of 20 hours minimum)

Going Public aims to help students develop as public communicators through a holistic approach to health in the community and a systemic understanding of healthcare in the United States. It invites students to practice and expand the critical skills of synthesis and analysis and rhetorical skills of persuasion through their service, writing, and research in the community. In going beyond the classroom, students will develop the knowledge and understanding needed to address issues of health and healthcare, and find their own voice in communicating this knowledge to public audiences—the very people whose lives are affected by these issues. They will come to understand both the power of language in creating and transforming publics, and the responsibility that comes with any attempt to manage and disseminate information. The long-term goal is to help seed the kind of collective action that will enable individuals and families to co-produce their health within their communities, local and extended, as a key component to improving health and healthcare in the United States.
Readings, discussions, and reflections will emphasize the following areas:

• (1) holistic approach to health: not just sickness care but being healthy and staying healthy; not just physical health but also mental, social, behavioral, and environmental wellbeing;
• (2) cultural literacy in relocating the self in the community: exploring shared goals, assessing community needs and strengths, building trust and reciprocity, perspective taking
• (3) critical literacy: skills of research and analysis and a "systems thinking" approach that takes into account the broader cultural and economic contexts shaping health and care and their local and personal effects.
• (4) civic engagement: understanding public health as a "commons," locating collective action in the co-production of health in the community within a democratic process of "polycentric governance"
• (5) rhetorical skills and strategies for narrating public stories:

These readings will provide a framework for class discussions and reflections on service-related activities, with a view of creating meaningful and sustainable change within communities.

In addition to performing service (a minimum of 20 hours over 10 weeks), students will collaborate on 3 sets of presentations. In writing assignments, students will: reflect on their service experience in light of ideas from readings and presentations; develop one or more focused messages for targeted audiences; and report on their research project. They will recapitulate the journey of going public in three public narratives, in stories of self, us, and now. Since this is an Intensive Writing course, peer reviews and revisions will be built into the sequence of assignments. Throughout the semester, students will be assembling their portfolio of writings to be submitted along with the research paper.

16580 4:00 - 5:15p TR

Our readings and film viewings in this course will focus on both college and high school life, particularly the student-teacher relationship. We will be especially concerned with how the act of writing is represented, taught, learned, and unlearned in these works. At the same time, we will work on refining your own writing practices.

In complex ways, fiction, drama, and film reflect and shape the myths and assumptions in our culture about the purpose of an education and what it takes to be a successful teacher, student, and writer. Narratives about schooling reflect and sometimes ignore or reconcile conflicts having to do with class, race, and gender difference. We will explore the ways in which fiction and film attempt to work through those conflicts, often through the use of or the subversion of stereotypes like the rebel student or the savior teacher. In light of the texts we analyze and the ideas of several experts on education, we will revisit our own beliefs and assumptions: to what extent is education about the transmission of knowledge, finding an identity or a purposeful life, and/or something you pass through on the way to something else?

Texts will include Bennett's The History Boys, Sittenfeld's Prep, Wolff's Old School, Margulies's Collected Stories, Gruwell's Freedom Writers Diary, and the films Waiting for Superman, Dead Poet's Society, and Educating Rita.

Assignments include five response papers, two major papers, a midterm and a final exam.

31981 11:15a - 12:30p TR

Pre-requisite, W103 or W203 taken here at Indiana University, or permission of the instructor. You are also expected to have read Janet Burroway's Writing Fiction (any edition will do) before you come to class the first day.

This course is not a fiction writing workshop, though there will be plenty of weekly, focused creative exercises (some to be shared with the class) to jump start your writing and get you exploring various elements and techniques in writing, including point of view, setting, character development, conflict, scene and narrative summary, narrative structure, voice, narrative distance, etc.

This will not be a literature class, though expect to do a lot of close reading and analysis of contemporary fiction.

Neither will this be a theory course, though we will examine and discuss specifically the many technical, aesthetic, and ideological choices writers make, as well as the effects of those choices. In other words, this course is designed to help you strengthen yourself as a writer by studying the ways in which other writers have put their stories and novels together. We will read a range of contemporary fiction, some of it "hot off the press. " Class attendance and substantive preparation and participation are critical. Your full commitment is essential. In addition to regular creative exercises and final portfolio, you will probably be assigned something along the lines of two or three short papers, a presentation, and at least one exam.

Important note: Please make sure you have access to Oncourse by the middle of December. The book list and other information about our first day will be posted there.

16582 2:30 - 3:45p TR

This course is taught in the workshop style, with occasional readings from a common text. The course presumes your familiarity with the basic elements of fiction writing.

16583 2:30 - 3:45p MW

ABOVE SECTION REQUIRES PERMISSION OF INSTRUCTOR

This course is a workshop in writing poetry. Students will turn in a poem a week, which will be discussed in class. The poems will be formal exercises drawn from Wendy Bishop's Thirteen Ways of Looking for a Poem. Students will learn to work with accentual and syllabic meters, as well as to create contemporary versions of ancient forms such as sonnets and sestinas. No tests. No auditors. Students will distribute copies of their work to all members of the class.

Approval of the instructor is required for admission. To apply, email 5 pages of poetry by attachment and a list of creative writing courses (including the name of their instructors) you've taken at IU at least one week before your registration day. To improve your chances of getting a place in the workshop, submit your manuscript as soon as possible, since places will be filled as people apply. Those who register late should apply at the beginning of the registration period so that, if admitted, a place will be reserved for them in the class. No places will be saved for late registration.

Course Text: Wendy Bishop THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING FOR A POEM