Undergraduate Studies
English Courses
Fall 2013 List of Courses
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English 115 American Experience (ALU)
Lecture 1 MWF 9:05-9:55 Instructor: Marissa Carrere
Primarily for nonmajors. Introduction to the interdisciplinary study of American culture, with a wide historical scope and attention to diverse cultural experiences in the U.S., Readings in fiction, prose, and poetry, supplemented by painting, photography, film, and material culture. Special focus on the history and culture of childhood and youth. (Gen.Ed. AL, U)
English 115 American Experience (ALU)
Lecture 2 MWF 10:10-11:00 Instructor: Adam Colman
This course is restricted to RAP students only. Primarily for nonmajors. Introduction to the interdisciplinary study of American culture, with a wide historical scope and attention to diverse cultural experiences in the U.S. Readings in fiction, prose, and poetry, supplemented by painting, photography, film, and material culture. (Gen.Ed. AL, U)
English 117 Ethnic American Literature (ALU) (new requirements: global Anglophone/ethnic American literature distribution)
Lecture 1 MWF 1:25-2:15 Instructor: Casey Hayman
American literature written by and about ethnic minorities, from the earliest immigrants through the cultural representations in modern American writing. (Gen.Ed. AL, U)
English 131 Society and Literature (ALG)
Lecture 1 MW 4:40-5:30 Instructor: Jenny Adams
For nearly two millennia, authors have used English literature to explore social patterns, problems, and crises. The first part of the class will look at the earliest English language and at the literature that helped usher England and Englishness into being. (Main Authors: Geoffrey Chaucer, Marie de France, William Shakespeare.) We will then follow English across the Atlantic to the North American colonies, where authors used literature to sort out their own emerging identity as Americans. (Main Authors: Benjamin Franklin, Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass.) Finally, we will look at the global sweep of English, and the ways colonial and postcolonial writers use literature to explore the complicated intersections between cultures, genres, and identities. (Main Authors: Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer, Derek Walcott, Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai.) Weekly response papers, 2 essays, 1 midterm, and 1 final exam. (Gen.Ed. AL, G)
Disc 1 TH 9:30-10:20 am Instructor: N. Qadir |
Disc 7 TH 9:30-10:20 am Instructor: C. Houston |
Disc 2 TH 2:30-3:20 Instructor: G. Ocasion |
Disc 8 TH 11:15-12:05 pm Instructor: F. Albert |
Disc 3 TH 9:30-10:20 am Instructor: A. Nadeau |
Disc 9 TH 1:00-1:50 pm Instructor: A. Waltman |
Disc 4 TH 11:15-12:05 pm Instructor: A. Genung |
Disc 10 TH 11:15-12:05 pm Instructor: G. Ocasion |
Disc 5 TH 1:00-1:50 pm Instructor: C. Houston |
Disc 11 TH 1:00-1:50 pm Instructor: A. Nadeau |
Disc 6 TH 2:30-3:20 pm Instructor: F. Albert |
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English 132 Gender, Sexuality, Literature & Culture (ALG)
Lecture 1 MWF 11:15-12:05 Instructor: Rachel Daniel
Literature treating the relationship between man and woman. Topics may include: the nature of love, the image of the hero and heroine, and definitions, past and present, of the masculine and feminine. (Gen.Ed. AL, G)
English 132 Gender, Sexuality, Literature & Culture (ALG)
Lecture 2 MWF 12:20-1:10 Instructor: Katherine Marantz
In this course, we will look at literature published between 1945 and the present. Focusing both on broader historical and cultural contexts and on textual details, we will think about how the authors negotiate the relationships between identities, desires, and spaces, with particular attention to how ideas of gender and sexuality are constructed, understood, and challenged. Our scope will be limited to novels and short stories, which will allow us to explore how two particular narrative forms get taken up, tested, and manipulated at different moments, for different purposes.
English 140 Reading Fiction (AL)
Lecture 1 MWF 1:25-2:15 Instructor: Matthew Harrison
An introduction to themes and techniques of fiction through a reading of selected short stories and novels with emphasis on structure, style, point of view, and theme. (Gen.Ed. AL)
English 142 Reading Drama (AL)
Lecture 1 MWF 9:05-9:55 Instructor: Josefine Hardman
In this course, we will focus on strategies for reading and analyzing drama. We will ask questions (and attempt to find answers) about issues such as dramatic language, structure, style, and character. In addition to developing close reading skills for this particular genre, we will imagine potential stagings of our selected plays. Special emphasis on the tragic, the weird, the absurd, and the darkly comic in drama from Euripides to Shakespeare to Beckett.
English 144 World Literature in English (ALG) (new requirements: global Anglophone/ethnic American literature distribution)
Lecture 1 MWF 9:05-9:55 Instructor: Meghan Conine
Study of major literary texts in English from different parts of a postcolonial "third world" -- African countries, the Caribbean, and India. Commonalities and differences in literary development in postcolonial nations. (Gen.Ed. AL, G)
English 200 Intensive Literary Studies (old and new requirements: English 200 is a required course)
Lecture 1 TuTh 9:30-10:45 Instructor: Peggy O’Brien
The purpose of this course is to prepare you for an undergraduate career as an English major. To this end, we will study a number of works of fiction and poetry, mainly short stories and short poems. We will spend a lot of time studying both under the microscope of close reading. Regularly, therefore, our short stories and short poems will be shortened further into sentences and lines, the building blocks of fiction and poetry. Regularly too, we will zoom out and ask what larger questions of context each text poses. What do we need to know about history or a certain culture to do the words before us justice? We‘ll also work on acquiring a critical vocabulary to describe what we‘re seeing and hearing. With prose we will consider, among other things, elements of narration, concepts like voice and distance. With poetry we‘ll look at rhythm, figures of speech, formal features such as rhyme and stanzas, but especially the construction of lines, the backbone of free verse. The reading list will include works by men and women of diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds. Writing for the course will consist of weekly response papers and three formal essays executed by means of several drafts.
English 200 Intensive Literary Studies (old and new requirements: English 200 is a required course)
Lecture 2 MW 6:15-7:30 Instructor: Jim Freeman
Course description not available at this time.
English 200 Intensive Literary Studies (old and new requirements: English 200 is a required course)
Lecture 3 TuTh 2:30-3:45 Instructor: Ernest Gallo
English majors only. Prerequisite: Gen. Ed. College Writing with a grade of ‘B’ or better (students who received a waiver for College Writing, please contact department to add course). Students must receive a grade of ‘B-’ or higher in ENGL 200 to proceed in the English major.
English 200 Intensive Literary Studies (old and new requirements: English 200 is a required course)
Lecture 4 MWF 2:30-3:20 Instructor: Kirby Farrell
English majors only. Prerequisite: Gen. Ed. College Writing. We live in narratives, from cultural histories to personal life stories. In practice we understand and navigate through the world using enabling fictions, accounts that help us make sense of life. We’ll be taking a ground-up approach to literary study, examining what goes on in texts by bringing together perspectives from psychology, anthropology, and history. Instead of starting with pre-defined literary categories and applying them to texts, we’ll be looking first at texts as behavior and analyzing their structures and the kinds of work they do, working toward literary concepts and terms. Readings range from Shakespeare to recent writers. Requirements: a series of short problem-solving papers, one every week or two.
English 200 Intensive Literary Studies (old and new requirements: English 200 is a required course)
Lecture 5 MW 4:40-5:55 Instructor: Rachel Mordecai
English majors only. Prerequisite: Gen. Ed. College Writing. Our focus in this course will be on developing the critical thinking, speaking and writing skills that are needed for success in the English major. You will become familiar with key literary conventions, literary terms, and critical approaches, as we read selections of contemporary American fiction, poetry, and drama. You will write a lot, in class and out of it, producing informal weekly reader-responses, and three papers of varying lengths.
English 200 Intensive Literary Studies (old and new requirements: English 200 is a required course)
Lecture 6 MW 4:40-5:55 Instructor: TBA
Prerequisite: Gen. Ed. CW. Introduction to literary study, concentrating on close reading and analysis of texts, writing and revising critical essays, and discussion of the issues that underlie the study of literature. Prerequisite: ENGLWRIT 112 or equivalent. This course is open to English majors only.
English 201 Early British Literature & Culture (old requirements: British literature pre-1700) (new requirements: English 201 or 221)
Lecture 1 TuTh 11:15-12:30 pm Instructor: Joseph Black
English majors only. This class focuses on some of the most richly challenging works of medieval and early modern English literature: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Canterbury Tales (selections), The Faerie Queene (all of Book One), and Paradise Lost (in its entirety), supplemented with other, shorter texts that help illuminate the “epic-romance” tradition. We will immerse ourselves in these books and use them to explore a wide range of literary and cultural issues, including questions of genre (and the role of quests, monsters, and magic in epic-romance narrative), the intersection of literature, history, and the folkloric, and representations of heroism and gender roles. Two papers, a test, and some take-home assignments.
English 201 Early British Literature & Culture (old requirements: British literature pre-1700) (new requirements: English 201 or 221)
Lecture 2 MWF 10:10-11:00 Instructor: David Toomey
This course will survey the work of influential British writers from the medieval period to the eighteenth century. We will explore these works for their particular contribution to literature and literary culture; we will also work to understand how they were shaped by their historical, social and political contexts. Coursework will include in-class quizzes, a brief presentation to the class on a subject related to the contexts of the literature the course treats, a mid term response essay, and a final response essay.
English 202 Later British Literature & Culture (old requirements: British literature 1700-1900 requirement) (new requirements: English 202, 268, 268 requirements)
Lecture 1 TuTh 2:30-3:45 pm Instructor: TBA
English majors only. The development of British literature from the Enlightenment of the 18th century through the Romaticism and Realism of the 19th century to the Modernism of the early 20th century; literary response to scientific and industrial changes, political revolution and the technical and social reordering of British society. Open only to English majors, and those studying at the University on international or domestic exchange.
English 202 Later British Literature & Culture (old requirements: British literature 1700-1900 requirement) (new requirements: English 202, 268, 268 requirements)
Lecture 2 TuTh 1:00-2:15 pm Instructor: TBA
See course description above.
English 203H Honors Bible, Myth Literature and Society (old and new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 TuTh 2:30-3:45 Instructor: Mason Lowance
This course is an introduction to the literature of the Old and New Testaments. Our text is the Oxford English Annotated Bible, a Revised Standard Version. We will examine the genres of biblical writing, the historical books, poetry, and prophecy of the Old Testament, the theories of Biblical composition, and the influence of ancient Near Eastern cultures and myths on the development of Hebrew literature. The gospel accounts and letters of Paul from the New Testament, and the apocalyptic writings of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation will also be studied.
English 204 Introduction to Asian American Literature ALU (old requirements: elective)(new requirements: global Anglophone/ethnic American literature or elective requirement)
Lecture 1 MWF 12:20-1:10 pm Instructor: Asha Nadkarni
How does the category “Asian American” challenge and complicate the idea of America itself? This course will explore this question through a survey of the diverse terrain of Asian American literature. In doing so, it is intended to familiarize students with key critical issues that have shaped the study of Asian American writings, and to provide some sense of the historical conditions out of which those works have emerged. What are the histories of immigration, citizenship, racialization and colonialism that Asian American literature is writing within and against? Focusing on how particular texts give representational shape to the experiences they depict, we will pay special attention to the ways in which Asian American writers negotiate issues of race, class, gender and sexuality. This course will be participating in the Asian American Literary Review’s Mixed Race Initiative Synchronous Teaching Program. This program shares curriculum, resources and connections with over 75 classrooms in 9 countries. The goal is a global conversation that builds academic and civic community, and that challenges and grows our understandings of race and mixed race.
English 221 Shakespeare AL (old requirements: Shakespeare or elective)(new requirements: English 201 or 221 requirement)
Lecture 1 MW 1:25-2:15+ discussion Instructor: Jane Degenhardt
This course offers a broad survey of Shakespeare’s plays, including a sampling of comedies, tragedies, histories, and romances. We’ll unlock the mysteries of Shakespeare’s plays by focusing on the beauty of their language, the cultural norms that they challenge, and the realities of theater and performance in Renaissance England. Why do we read Shakespeare? Why do his plays continue to resonate today? Under what conditions were his plays written and performed? Through careful reading and discussion, we will explore what makes Shakespeare’s plays so powerful, both for Renaissance audiences and for modern-day ones. Special attention will be given to Shakespeare’s exploration of cultural outcasts, his playful manipulations of gender and sexuality, and his often unsettling moral messages. Two essays, a mid-term and a final exam. Attendance at lecture and consistent participation in discussion sections required.
221 Disc 1 F 10:10-11:00 am Instructor: D. Katz |
221 Disc 4 F 2:30-3:20 pm Instructor: T. Hopper |
221 Disc 2 F 11:15-12:05 pm Instructor: E. Fox |
221 Disc 5 F 10:10-11:00 am Instructor: E. Fox |
221 Disc 3 F 1:25-2:15 pm Instructor: T. Hopper |
221 Disc 6 F 11:15-12:05 Instructor: D. Katz |
English 254 Writing & Reading Imaginative Literature (new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 MWF 10:10-11:00 Instructor: Andrew McAlpine
Analysis of problems of form, elements of genre, style and development of themes of stories and poems, written by class members and in class texts. Lecture, discussion, 5 poems, 2 stories, 2 essays. (Gen.Ed. AL)
English 254 Writing & Reading Imaginative Literature (new requirements: elective)
Lecture 2 MWF 11:15-12:05 Instructor: TBA
English 254H Honors Writing & Reading Imaginative Literature (new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 TuTh 2:30-3:45 Instructor: Jonathan Volk
Analysis of problems of form, elements of genre, style and development of themes of stories and poems, written by class members and in class texts. Lecture, discussion, 5 poems, 2 stories, 2 essays. (Gen.Ed. AL)
English 268 American literature and Culture Before 1865 (old requirements: American Identities or 2nd American)(new requirements: English 202, 268 and/or 269 requirements)
Lecture 1 TuTh 11:15-12:30 Instructor: Mason Lowance
Open to majors only. It fulfills the requirement for the English major for one American Literature course. Course requirements include: short analytical essay, approximately 5 pages; longer term paper, approximately 12 pages; take-home final examination. The format of the course will be a seminar in American literature from 1820-1865. The content will be organized chronologically but will also be examined thematically. In addition to the "canonized" authors of this period (Hawthorne and Melville, Emerson and Thoreau, Whitman and Dickinson), we will also consider some of the writers who exerted tremendous social and political impact on antebellum American culture, including the slave narrators Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, the feminist critics Margaret Fuller and Angelica Grimke Weld, the reformers and abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, and the most widely read author of the entire period, Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose Uncle Tom’s Cabin galvanized sentiment against slavery through sales of 5 million copies in a reading population of 15 million by 1860. Aesthetic, literary, biographical, cultural, social, and political approaches to these authors will all be considered.
English 268 American literature and Culture Before 1865 (old requirements: American Identities or 2nd American)(new requirements: English 202, 268 and/or 269 requirements)
Lecture 2 MW 4:40-5:55 Instructor: Hoang Phan
Open to majors only. Beginning in the Age of Revolution and ending in the Age of Emancipation, this course will focus on the relationship between American literature and the broader social transformations of this period. Studying the formal and thematic innovations of a range of American writers, the course will explore the various ways these writers responded to the radical upheavals of their times.What are the differing narratives posed by literary works of these periods, on the issues ofterritorial expansion, slavery, and national union; citizenship and democracy; social order and revolution? Reading widely and deeply, we’ll study the writings of Brown, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Douglass; Melville; Stowe; and Whitman, among others. Throughout our readings we’ll examine the ways in which the literature of this period contributed to the imagined community of the nation, as well as raised problems for the dominant narratives of the nation.
English 269 American literature and Culture After 1865 (old requirements: American Identities or 2nd American)(new requirements: English 202, 268 and/or 269 requirements)
Lecture 1 TuTh 9:30-10:45 Instructor: Deborah Carlin
Open to majors only. Course description forthcoming.
English 279 Introduction to American Studies (old requirements: American Identities or 2nd American or elective)(new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 MWF 2:30-3:20 pm Instructor: Ron Welburn
This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary study of American culture. We will consider its foundations in literature and history, and will explore how methodologies for it include indigenous and ethnic identities, transnationalism, borderlands theories, global consumerism, and even environmental events. Pursuing a series of case studies in music, popular culture, material culture, and the politics of environmentalism will help provide a more broad perspective of American culture. Tentative required texts include Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s novel of 1827, Hope Leslie, and American Exceptionalism, a critical analysis by Deborah Madsen. Expect a series of critical essays and a final project based upon a selected case study. Texts for this course will be available at Food For Thought Books in Amherst.
English 298B Literary Classics on Film
Lecture 1 W 6:30-9:00 pm Instructor: Kirby Farrell
One credit film practicum. Course description forthcoming.
English 300 Junior Year Writing (old and new requirements: junior year writing requirement)
Lecture 1 TuTh 9:30-10:45 Instructor: Laura Doyle
Title: Modernist Fiction in a Global Context. The literary movement typically called modernism was in fact many linked movements that arose around the world in response to social, economic, and political transformations in the early twentieth-century. Characterized by its break from conventions, modernist art depicts new forms of connection and new forms of isolation and alienation--a state of things Virginia Woolf described in her observation that each person has "put locks on his doors and bolts on his windows to ensure some privacy, yet is linked to his fellows by wires which pass overhead, by waves of sound which pour through the roof and speak aloud to him of battles and murders and strikes and revolutions all over the world." Although we will give most of our attention to English-language modernist fiction, we will read about the international events that affected writers in this period and we will learn something about the range of non-Anglo-European modernist movements. Reading will include history and literary theory as well as the fiction. As a Junior Writing seminar, the course is writing-intensive, with drafts, revisions, and required research. Course prerequisite: English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 300 Junior Year Writing (old and new requirements: junior year writing requirement)
Lecture 2 TuTh 1:00-2:15 pm Instructor: Nicholas Bromell
Topic: Writing about Childhood. This course focuses on developing your skills as a writer by reading, reflecting, and writing about childhood – childhood itself, and what others have written about it. You will undertake two demanding projects. One is a critical essay on several of the works we read, analyzing their depictions of childhood and their particular ways of evoking or reconstructing this vanished and in some ways irretrievable life stage. The second is your own attempt to write about childhood, either your childhood or that of some other person. You will work on both projects simultaneously, taking them through several drafts. The writing about childhood we read will include work by Vladimir Nabokov, Toni Morrison, Sigmund Freud, D.W. Winnicott, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Frederick Douglass, W.G. Sebald, and Zitkala-Sa. Course prerequisite: English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 300 Junior Year Writing (old and new requirements: junior year writing requirement)
Lecture 3 TuTh 1:00-2:15 pm Instructor: Janis Greve
Topic: Memoirs of Crisis. Pre-requisite: English 200 with grade of B- or better, Senior and Junior English majors. Satisfies Junior-Year Writing Requirement. This class will focus on personal narratives in which crisis plays a central role. Why read such accounts? What do they offer those who haven't experienced large-scale misfortune and those who have? Memoirs depicting life in extremis are at once devastating and surprisingly hopeful, poignant, and life-changing as they plumb the deepest, most resilient aspects of the human self. More than any other form of autobiography, the therapeutic “storying” of crisis is fundamentally about life: our instinct to survive and find meaning in even the most challenging circumstances. Looking at texts from the 1990's to the present, we will examine the ways such conditions pressure identity, forging new selves. We will look at the choices memoirists make in crafting this profoundly shared experience, what spurs and empowers their writing, and what attracts us and challenges us as readers. Supplementary critical readings will examine cultural and literary frameworks and offer lenses for reading the personal accounts.
We'll write five 3-page essays and a 10-page research essay. Primary texts may include: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby; A Three Dog Life, Abigail Thomas; Blue Nights, Joan Didion; The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls; Stitches by David Small; The Memory Palace, Mira Bartok. Selected essays from Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes, Arthur Frank, Paul Eakin, and G. Thomas Couser.
Course prerequisite: English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 300 Junior Year Writing (old and new requirements: junior year writing requirement)
Lecture 4 TuTh 11:15-12:30 pm Instructor: Adam Zucker
Title: Tudor and Stuart Poetry. This course focuses on short- and long-form poetry written in England between 1540 and 1660. We will read the work of authors like Edmund Spenser, Phillip Sidney, John Donne, Ben Jonson, Emilia Lanyer, Mary Wroth, and Robert Herbert both for their aesthetic strategies and for their historical engagements. Touchstone texts will include Sidney’s great sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella, Spenser’s Amoretti and The Faerie Queene, Donne’s lyric poetry and satire, Jonson’s Epigrams, and Mary Wroth’s magnificent Pamphilia to Amphilanthus. Assignments in critical scholarship by Richard Rambuss, Arthur Marotti, and Michael Schoenfeldt, among others, will combine readings in political history and genre theory, with special focus on the ways in which satire, seduction, and moralizing mix in verse forms. Students will be expected to complete both imitative and expository/analytical assignments – prosody and close reading will be emphasized in the earlier, shorter essays. The course will culminate with the drafting and revising of a longer researched essay (12-15 pages) that engages with the critical history pertaining to a poet or to single work. Either an interest in or previous course in early poetry is suggested. Course prerequisite: English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 300 Junior Year Writing (old and new requirements: junior year writing requirement)
Lecture 5 MW 4:40-5:55 pm Instructor: Ruth Jennison
Title: The Political Imagination: Marxism and Literature. This course pairs readings in Marxist theory with primary texts from the traditions and anti-traditions of 20th and 21st Century American poetry. We will treat poetry written during the three most recent periods of capitalist economic crisis: the 1930s, the 1970s, and our own post-2008 recession-era horizon. Our guiding questions will be: How does poetry offer ways for its readers to grasp the contours of the global economy? How does poetic form mediate the invisible kernels of the capitalist mode of production: namely the extraction of surplus value; the rise of thick webs of financialization; the molton histories of labor that lie beneath the carapace of the commodity? We will also explore the ways in which poetry elaborates an alternative political imaginary, replete with resistances and utopian longings, from industrial sabotage to ecstatic streetscenes of collective struggle. With the help of theorists, philosophers and historians such as Fredric Jameson, Theodor Adorno, Sylvia Federici, Raymond Williams, and, of course, Karl Marx, we will trace how American poetry has shifted its formal strategies in concert with changes in our economic lives. Primary texts will include works by Sol Funaroff, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Richard Wright, Muriel Rukeyser, Antler, Larry Eigner, Lyn Hejinian, Amiri Baraka, Joshua Clover, Rodrigo Toscano, Mark Nowak, and Lisa Robertson (our sole Canadian). A survey of popular work produced from the ranks of the Occupy movement will contour our discussions of how American poetry metabolizes the ascendency of neoliberalism, and popular resistance to the politics of austerity. Students should be prepared for a student-driven, discussion-intensive seminar atmosphere. Junior Year Writing requirements will apply to our schedule of writing and revising projects. Course prerequisite: English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 302 Studies/Textuality & New Media (old and new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 W 5:00-7:30 pm Instructor: TreaAndrea Russworm
This class will have a special topic focus on race, gender, and new media. We will study a variety of new media forms, including video games, online web series, blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos. All of our case studies and weekly lesson plans will either feature content produced and created by women artists and fans or deal explicitly with questions about gender representation—both masculinity and femininity. Throughout the term, some questions we will explore include: Does misogyny persist in new media and digital cultures? While art games may tend to convey more complex messages about gender and sexuality, what can we say about the industry, mainstream video games, and the dominant image of gamers as young and male? Is there anything productive or interesting about the dominance of normative masculinity in digital spaces? Can the web series format compete with television in any significant way? By the end of the semester, all students in the class will conduct interviews of new media producers and help archive this work on a course website. Course prerequisite: English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 307 Modernism and Its Others ALG (old and new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 MW 6:15-7:30 pm Instructor: Tanya Fernando
The early twentieth century was marked by destruction and war, and it was a commonplace idea that the human being became insignificant, alienated, lost. European and American artists at the time looked for ways to challenge reality and change it. One of the problems was that many artists believed that western art was at an impasse and that they needed new tools to be able to express their changing reality. They turned to forms from other cultures to begin to reconceptualize their own art. It was also a period of intense collaboration between artists coming from diverse art forms. This class is interdisciplinary in terms of texts and collaborative in terms of assignments. We will look at literature, but also manifestoes and works of art from other disciplines, e.g., dance, film, and the visual arts. Some of the texts we focus on are those by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, the Surrealists, Vaslav Nijinsky, Igor Stravinsky, and Richard Wright.
English 319 Representing the Holocaust ALG (old and new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 Tu 2:00-3:45 pm + discussion Instructor: James Young
In this course, we explore the ways history and memory of the Holocaust have been shaped for the next generation by victims in their diaries, by survivors in their memoirs, by novelists in their fiction, as well as by poets, video-testimony, film-makers, musicians, artists, monuments, and museums. Among readings and viewings for this course are works by Chaim A. Kaplan, Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, Sara Nomberg-Przytyk, Tadeusz Borowski, Paul Celan, Nelly Sachs, Dan Pagis, and Art Spiegelman, among others.
319 Disc 1 Th 1:00-2:15 pm Instructor: J. Young |
319 Disc 5 Th 9:30-10:45 am Instructor: L. Silber |
319 Disc 2 Th 2:30-3:45 pm Instructor: L. Silber |
319 Disc 6 Th 11:15-12:30pm Instructor: A. Lanham |
319 Disc 3 Th 1:00-2:15 pm Instructor: A. Lanham |
319 Disc 7 Th 9:30-10:45 Instructor: H. Wayne |
319 Disc 4 Th 11:15-12:30 pm Instructor: H. Wayne |
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English 329H Tutoring Writing: Theory and Practice
(old and new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 MWF 11:15-12:05 pm Instructor: Rebecca Lorimer Leonard
Prerequisite: Gen. Ed. College Writing 112 or 113 with a grade of "B" or better. Students interested in the course should submit an application to writingcenter@acad.umass.edu by April 9: (1) a formal letter explaining why the student is interested and has potential to become a writing tutor; (2) an academic writing sample (attached as a word or pdf file) and (3) the name and email address of the student’s 112 instructor or another instructor who can speak to the student's qualifications. Applications received after April 9 and before May 4 may be considered if seats are available. The strongest applications will be invited to an interview and can expect a decision by finals week.
English 341 Autobiographical Studies (old and new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 TuTh 2:30-3:45 Instructor: Nicholas Bromell
This course offers an opportunity to read widely in the genre of autobiography. The works we read will show us that some fundamental things we usually take for granted – what it means to be a “person,” what it means to have a “personality,” what it means to experience “time” – have been differently understood and represented by different writers. Your main writing projects in this course will be a critical essay on several of the works we read and an autobiographical essay of your own. The texts we read will include works by Augustine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin, William Apess, Frederick Douglass, Virginia Woolf, Pauli Murray, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Tobias Wolff. Course prerequisite: English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 343 English Epic Tradition (old and new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 MW 4:40-5:55 Instructor: Jim Freeman
Course description forthcoming.
Course prerequisite: English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 350 Expository Writing (old and new requirements: elective)(creative writing, nonfiction writing specializations)
Lecture 1 MW 4:40-5:55 Instructor: David Fleming
Writing today can feel curiously placeless. Sitting in front of our screens, writing to our online "friends," it's easy to feel that we are everywhere and nowhere at once, that our subject matter is life in all its instantaneousness; our scene, the expanding universe of social media; our audience, the vast, faceless society of the world wide web. This can be thrilling as we try on new identities, new genres, new ways of composing ourselves and the world. But it can also exacerbate our tendency to see writing as a matter of absence and our time on screen as a way to neglect the world around us. That's a shame because writing is a powerful way to be more engaged in the world, more aware of our surroundings, more responsible to our local communities, more present in the everyday places that ground and sustain us. This course is a chance to practice writing in the context of community - especially, the places in which we lead our daily lives. There will be some reading, but the main work will be several substantial writing projects, including traditional essays about place, field reports, travel writing, visual-verbal maps, plans for new and old places, profiles of and proposals about community. We'll think about how place writes and re-writes us and how we can write and re-write our place in the world. My fall 2012 syllabus for this course is available online at http://people.umass.edu/dfleming/english350.html, where you can also find a link to a blog of student writing. There will be changes for fall 2013, but the overall approach will remain the same. Course prerequisite: English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 354 Creative Writing: Introduction to Fiction (old and new requirements: elective)(creative writing specialization)
Lecture 1 MWF 1:25-2:15 pm Instructor: Maria Black
Introduction to Fiction. Intense investigation of fiction and the imagination. Course prerequisite: English majors only who have completed English 200.
English 354 Creative Writing: Introduction to Poetry (old and new requirements: elective)(creative writing specialization)
Lecture 2 MWF 11:15-12:05 pm Instructor: Edward Powers
Introduction to Poetry. Intense investigation of poetry and the imagination. Course prerequisite: English majors only who have completed English 200.
English 354 Creative Writing: Mixed Genre (old and new requirements: elective)(creative writing specialization)
Lecture 3 MWF 12:20-1:10 pm Instructor: TBA
Writing in the various modes of fiction, poetry, drama, and essay. Analysis of student writing in class and in tutorial; development of critical skills. . Course prerequisite: English majors only who have completed English 200.
English 355 Creative Writing: Fiction (old and new requirements: elective)(creative writing specialization)
Lecture 1 TuTh 1:00-2:15 pm Instructor: John Hennessy
English majors, BDIC, UWW, International/National exchange majors, or Masters students with TECSsubplan only. Pre-requisite: ENGL 354 or 354H with a grade of a 'B' or better. Pre-requisites waived with instructor's permission.
In this course students will write and workshop short stories. They will also read widely in contemporary fiction and complete a series of assignments intended to address specific aspects of fiction writing. Admission by permission of professor.
Students should submit one complete story and a brief personal statement (list and briefly discuss your reading preferences—/your favorite writers and books) to Professor Hennessy’s email address: jjhennes@english.umass.edu. DUE APRIL 15.
English 355 Creative Writing: Fiction (old and new requirements: elective)(creative writing specialization)
Lecture 2 Tu 4:00-6:30 pm Instructor: Sam Michel
English majors, BDIC, UWW, International/National exchange majors, or Masters students with TECSsubplan only. Pre-requisite: ENGL 354 or 354H with a grade of a 'B' or better. Pre-requisites waived with instructor's permission.
In this course students will write and workshop short stories. They will also read widely in contemporary fiction and complete a series of assignments intended to address specific aspects of fiction writing. Admission by permission of professor.
Students should submit no more than five pages of fiction (does not need to be complete story) and a brief personal statement (list and briefly discuss your reading preferences—/your favorite writers and books) to Professor Michel's email address: sammichel152@gmail.com DUE APRIL 15.
English 359 Victorian Imagination (old requirements: British literature 1700-1900 or elective)(new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 TuTh 11:15-12:30 Instructor: TBA
Course description forthcoming. Course prerequisite: English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 365 20th Century Literature of Ireland AL (old requirements: elective)(new requirements: global Anglophone/ethnic American litertuare or elective)
Lecture 1 TuTh 1:00-2:15 pm Instructor: Peggy O’Brien
The purpose of this course is, first of all, to read closely and carefully books by established Irish writers of this century including Joyce, Yeats, Synge and Heaney. Having no pretensions of being exhaustive, we will look at representative texts that provide an initial understanding of each writer. Beyond appreciating each work in its own right as literature, we will attempt to use these texts as springboards to explore key questions about Irish society, history and culture, especially literary activity. We will, for example, ask whether there really are separate native Irish and Anglo-Irish literary traditions. How do urban and rural motifs and attitudes figure? What are the differences between the experience of men and women in Ireland? What is the attitude toward history and geography in these writers? Towards the Catholic Church? What social mores are revealed, particularly with regard to family, tribe and nation? Class? The Irish language? How are Irish mythology and legend used? How has an oral tradition influenced a written one? How are idiom and dialect deployed, a unique Hiberno-English? Is there an identifiable Irish voice?
English 368 Modern American Drama AL (old requirements: 2nd American or elective)(new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 MW 11:15-12:05 pm + discussion Instructor: Jenny Spencer
Students will read, discuss, and write about influential and interesting American plays written between 1918 and the present. Requirements include regular quizzes on MOODLE, attendance at a local theatre production of a play by an American playwright, two papers, a midterm and final exam. This AL Gen Ed course also fulfills requirements for theatre majors, and can serve as an upper level elective in English.
Participation in discussion section is required.
368 Disc 1 F 10:10-11:00 am Instructor: R. Griffin |
368 Disc 3 F 1-1:50 pm Instructor: R. Griffin |
368 Disc 2 F 11:15-12:05 pm Instructor: A. Genung |
368 Disc 4 F 10:10-11:00 am Instructor: A. Genung |
English 374 20th Century American Literature (old requirements: 2nd American or elective)(new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 TuTh 11:15-12:30 Instructor: Joshua Lambert
This reading- and writing-intensive honors English course surveys the history of 20th-century American literature with an emphasis on prose fiction and the operations of the publishing industry. Students will read many of the most celebrated modern and postmodern American authors--Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth, Louise Erdrich, and Toni Morrison, among others--and we will consider the formal, practical, and institutional factors that have conferred canonicity on their works. Phenomena in the history of American publishing that will be covered include censorship, the bestseller list, literary prizes, and the rise of the trade paperback. We will discuss the economic, legal, and social positioning of literary works in the United States, as well as the formal relationships between the novel and other genres and media. In short, we'll ask why 20th-century Americans found it meaningful to write, publish, and read literary works.
English 376 American Fiction (old requirements: 2nd American or elective)(new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 TuTh 1:00-2:15 pm Instructor: Laura Doyle
What are the different ways that U.S. writers and communities have imagined the idea of "freedom"? How have different histories shaped diverse orientations toward this value? How can we gain perspective on this familiar ideal by way of the writers who have fashioned its meanings and limits? This course will focus on narratives of freedom in U.S. fiction, with attention also to the related themes of belonging, citizenship, dignity, ownership, border-crossing, independence, and interdependence. We'll read a range of 18th, 19th, and 20th century writers in order to develop a fuller sense of the history of the idea of freedom in the Atlantic world and to interpret more carefully the artistry of these writers who have brooded on it. Class preparation and participation will be a significant part of your grade, along with essays and exams. Course prerequisite: English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 379 Introduction to Professional Writing I (old and new requirements: elective)(Professional Writing/Technical Communication specialization)
Lecture 1 MWF 12:20-1:10 pm Instructor: David Toomey
This course offers an overview of commonly encountered professional genres such as memos, reports, job materials, and grant proposals. Students gain practice writing in these genres, with an emphasis on clarity and concision. They develop more sophisticated research skills and gain experience in communicating specialized information to non-specialist readers. Finally, they are exposed to the range of professional writing careers as they explore writing on both theoretical and practical planes through consideration of audience, as well as wider professional, social, and cultural contexts. Prereq.: ENGLWP 112 or equivalent; junior or senior status with a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or better. (3 credits).
English 379 Introduction to Professional Writing I (old and new requirements: elective)(Professional Writing/Technical Communication specialization)
Lecture 2 TuTh 9:30-10:45 Instructor: Jessica Ouellette
See course description above.
English 380 Professional Writing & Technical Communication I (old and new requirements: elective)(Professional Writing/Technical Communication specialization)
Lecture 1 MWF 11:15-12:05 pm Instructor: Janine Solberg
Junior and Senior students with a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or better. Introduces principles of technical writing, software documentation, and page design. Simulates the writing/editing process used in the computer industry; students write a 20-25 page manual documenting a software product, usually Microsoft Word.
English 391AD The Personal Essay (old and new requirements: elective)(creative writing specialization)
Lecture 1 Th 4:00-6:30 Instructor: Marian MacCurdy
The rigors of academia mandate that we write in one form or another for most of the first 21 years of our lives. After that we write to get jobs and to keep them, we write to engage in the commerce of our culture, and we write to communicate with others and with ourselves. This last genre is perhaps the least practiced but among the most important since writing is a process that helps us make meaning. Writing is both a verb and a noun; it represents our best thinking and helps us arrive at it. The irony of the term, the personal essay, is in learning to make rhetorical choices to help us to develop our own literary and personal values and describe the experiences that helped to generate them we begin a journey that ultimately takes us beyond ourselves and into the community, which can establish our common humanity. Course prerequisite: English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 416 Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (old requirements: British literature pre-1700 or elective)(new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 MWF 11:15-12:05 pm Instructor: Jen Adams
In this course we will work together to produce an in-depth reading of Geoffrey Chaucer's most famous poem, the "Canterbury Tales." A poem that has frustrated the Romantic poets, inspired T.S. Eliot, and baffled cinematographers, this masterpiece continues to inspire, baffle, and frustrate contemporary readers, who are drawn in by its spicy stories yet put off by its difficult language. We will read *slowly* through the poem so that we can work to grasp Chaucer's subtle complexities. We will also read more broadly in order to place the "Canterbury Tales" in the context of Chaucer's other works and in the context of late fourteenth-century literary culture. Weekly response papers, one essay, a midterm, a final exam, and the creation of your own Canterbury Tale. Course prerequisite: Open only to junior and senior English majors. English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 421 Advanced Shakespeare (old requirements: Shakespeare or elective)(new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 TuTh 1:00-2:15 pm Instructor: Adam Zucker
Course description forthcoming. Topic: The Subject of Tragedy. Course prerequisite: Open only to junior and senior English majors. English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 437H Honors Milton (old and new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 TuTh 2:30-3:45 pm Instructor: Joseph Black
The seventeenth century was a period marked by political, religious, cultural, scientific, and literary revolutions. John Milton, the most actively revolutionary of major English authors, played a role in many of these movements. We will read a broad selection of Milton’s writings, including his shorter English poems, Samson Agonistes, his epic Paradise Lost (complete), and selections from his prose. We will also read various texts with which Milton engages in explicit or implicit dialogue, including seventeenth-century works of radical politics and religion. The course will explore such issues as the intersection of literature, revolution, and authority; Milton and the Renaissance notion of woman; and Milton’s afterlife in the imagination of later writers and critics. Two papers, some take-home assignments, and a test. Course prerequisite: Open only to junior and senior English majors. English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 481 Individual American Authors: Melville & Modernity (old requirements: 2nd American or elective)(new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 MW 6:30-7:45 Instructor: Hoang Phan
Title: Melville and Modernity. Moby Dick, Melville's whale of a philosophical novel, continues recognized as one of the greatest novels in the Western literary canon. This course will read a range of Melville's
work - novels, novellas, short stories, and poetry - in relation to the historical transformations of modern America in the long nineteenth century. While we will read his work historically, we will also read select literary criticism and modern literary theory which has taken Melville's work as the occasion for broader reflections on multiple aspects of modernity, such as race, class, gender and sexuality.
Readings will include: Typee; Moby Dick; The Confidence Man; Pierre, or, the Ambiguities; Benito Cereno; Bartleby the Scrivener; Billy Budd; Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War.
Course prerequisite: Open only to junior and senior English majors. English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 491AC Working Yourself Up: Career Exploration
Lecture 1 Th 4-5:15 Instructor: Janis Greve
2 credits. For students who wish to be pro-active in paving the road to employment both during and after the completion of their degree in English. Students will practice job search skills and receive individualized guidance in creating a cover letter and résumé of immediate use. Guests will represent careers appropriate for a background in English. In addition to the cover letter and résumé, assignments are likely to include attendance at campus career fairs and networking events, two interviews with professionals from fields of interest, and a short essay researching careers. Formerly pass/fail, the course is now graded and not an "easy" 2 credits, though the work required can form really stepping stones to a future beyond the major. Course prerequisite: Open only to English majors who completed English 200.
English 491AM Following Faulkner (old requirements: 2nd American or elective)(new requirements: elective)
Lecture 1 TuTh 11:15-12:30 pm Instructor: Joanne Creighton
Course description forthcoming. Course prerequisite: Open only to junior and senior English majors. English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 494A Pulp Carribean (old requirements: elective)(new requirements: global Anglophone/ ethnic American literature or elective)
Lecture 1 MW 6:30-7:45 pm Instructor: Rachel Mordecai
This course will examine the construction of the Caribbean as an other-world characterized by tropical climate and landscape, exotic and unpredictable people, and mysterious and occult cultural practices
-- a perfect setting for the popular fiction genres of mystery, romance and suspense. Primary readings will include both texts that explore this other-world from the perspective of an (often hapless) outsider, and those focalized from an insider (that is, Caribbean-born) perspective. Class discussions and assignments will interrogate these categories and consider under what circumstances, and to what ends, the exotic is constructed and re-inscribed. Some secondary readings in Caribbean and postcolonial cultural theory, and popular fiction criticism, will be assigned. Weekly reader-response papers, one short (5-6pp) and one long (9-12 pp) critical paper will be required; other short exercises may also be assigned. Course prerequisite: Open only to junior and senior English majors. English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 494AR Race and Contemporary Arts (old and new requirements: Integrative Experience)
Lecture 1 MW 4:40-5:55 pm Instructor: Tanya Fernando
This is an interdisciplinary course that draws from a range of different art forms, as well as history and social science, to examine the ways in which race appears in the contemporary arts. Some central questions are: How does race structure the arts in terms of content and form as well as other levels of cultural and political representation? Why is it important to have equal representation of forms within the cultural sphere? Who creates? Who views? Who has access to circulation? How does this affect all of as citizens of a community?
English 491CI Codes, Ciphers, Hackers & Crackers (old and new requirement: Integrative Experience)
Lecture 1 TuTh 2:30-3:45 Instructor: Stephen Harris
This course is an Integrative Experience course. As such, it has two major aims. The first is a practical introduction to codes and ciphers. And in order to break codes, we will examine the structures of the English language, as well as the distributive characteristics of words and phonemes. We will consider English as a closed system with a fixed rule set. Our second aim is theoretical, and builds upon that consideration: to examine the relationship between a system and its component elements. Starting with the relationship between letters and cipher types, we will move to the relationship between users and networks and to the larger cultural issues of hackers (and crackers) and The System. Is there room in a fixed system for invention, rather than just innovation? What role is there for imagination? How does the world of systems and networks ask us to think differently than does the world of westward expansion or discovery? No knowledge of codes, ciphers, or computers is necessary, although welcome.Course prerequisite: Open only to senior English majors. English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 494DI Dystopian Games, Comics, Media (old and new requirements: Integrative Experience)
Lecture 1 Th 5:00-7:30 pm Instructor: TreaAndrea Russworm
In this class, we will study video games, postmodern cultural theory, and (tangentially) comic books as we ask questions about the persistence of dystopian narratives in print and digital visual culture. For example, what do dystopian narratives in comics, video games, and new media productions have in common? What makes "dark," "moody," and outright apocalyptic narratives like The Walking Dead, Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead, Sweet Tooth and the web series Down Twisted popular in this current historical moment? Can postmodern cultural theory help us better understand some of the social and political ramifications of dystopian culture? Further, can the theory make more clear how such stories envision the perils of the future in ways that inadvertently comment on our current times? Is it possible that the cautionary tales of dystopian narratives might, if heeded, make the world a better place? We will compare different game genres in order to make arguments about the types of anxieties, fears, and dreams that get articulated in RPG games like Fallout 3, shooters like BioShock, war games like Metal Gear Solid 4, and in third person action games like Grand Theft Auto IV. Important note: This class will follow a team-based discussion format, meaning all students will be asked to play a leading role in class discussions and will be required to work closely on digital projects and select other assignments with members of a team. Access to an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 is not required but it is strongly preferred. This a “General Education Integrative Experience” class and all students will receive credit as such. In the context of our major the General Education Integrative Experience means certain learning objectives will be emphasized: critical thinking and writing, persuasive communication, creative and analytical thinking, pluralistic perspective and team-building, working collaboratively, developing technological literacy, and applying what you are learning at UMass to the world beyond college and your individual experiences.. Course prerequisite: Open only to senior English majors. English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 494PI Pros and Cons (old and new requirements: Integrative Experience)
Lecture 1 Tu 4:00-6:30 pm Instructor: Ernest Gallo
In this course in critical thinking, the class will debate subjects like the following:
The Galileo Case/ Rhetoric and Logic: Teilhard de Chardin / The Postmodern Critique of Rationality/ Freud and Rigor in Argument/ Personal Reflection: The Effect of Learning on Prior Beliefs. Students will adopt a position on these subjects and write a condensed argument supporting that position. The class will engage in discussion.Course prerequisite: Open only to senior English majors. English 200 and either 201, 202 and 221 with a qualifying grade of a C or better.
English 499C Capstone Course
Lecture 1 TU 11:15-12:05 pm Instructor: John Hennessy
English 499, Foundations and Departures in Creative Writing: Fiction, Poetry, and Literary Non-Fiction is a multi-genre, two-semester course in creative writing designed to help students complete a Capstone project within the genre of their choice. Both a class in contemporary literature and a writing workshop, Foundations and Departures will offer students a wide variety of reading assignments and writing exercises from across all three genres. At the end of the first semester students will submit a portfolio of original work; in the second semester students will finish drafting and revising their Capstone projects. Textbooks will include two fiction anthologies (Charlie Chan Is Dead 2 and The Art of the Story), novels by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Virginia Woolf, and Milan Kundera, memoir by Helene Cooper, non-fiction by Joan Didion, poetry collections by Major Jackson, Katia Kapovich, and other contemporary poets.
Interested students should submit a personal statement: 1-2 pages, list and briefly discuss your reading preferences: favorite books, writers, poems, poets, etc.; also, tell me if you are a student in Commonwealth College—some priority will be given to ComColl students, but some of the most successful students in 499 in past years have come from outside Commonwealth College. Also include a writing sample—one complete story or essay, or twenty pages from a longer work, or 5-10 poems. Some combination of the previous list is also permitted. Please include your Spire #.
SEND TO: jjhennes@english.umass.edu by APRIL 15.