Spring 2009 courses
ENGL 101. Seminar in Rhetoric & Culture
A writing-intensive introduction to cultural inquiry and the art of persuasion. Through the analysis of texts in various genres and through the production of their own written arguments, students will learn to recognize and employ appropriate strategies for effective communication. Students will also attend and respond critically to co-curricular cultural events, including art exhibits, concerts, films, lectures, and plays.
ENGL 102. Introduction to Literature (VanHoosier-Carey)
This course is an introduction to literary appreciation and interpretive techniques, with emphasis upon creative reading followed by analysis and synthesis in classroom discussion and essay-writing. The principal aim in this course (in addition to honing writing skills) is to develop an educated appreciation for literature as art, an appreciation based upon understanding, and an understanding derived from the following: 1) close, sensible reading of the text; 2) structural and textural analyses of individual literary works; 3) study of the major genres of belletristic literature: the short story, the novel (or novella), poetry, and drama; 4) an introduction to significant critical theories and familiarization with some of the main approaches of literary criticism: e.g., traditional, formalistic, psychological, mythological and archetypal, feminist, etc.
ENGL 241. Studies in Representative British Authors (Shelburne)
An introduction to the poetry, fiction, drama, and intellectual prose of representative British authors, Medieval to Modern.
ENGL 290. Ecology, Technology, Culture (Hamming)
Operating from the nexus of multiple disciplines—media studies, cultural theory, ecocriticism—this course will examine cultural anxieties about the intersections of technology and ecology in contemporary American society. Throughout the semester, students will be exposed to a variety of Humanist approaches to cultural inquiry—literature, film, visual arts, political science, economics, philosophy, history—that will round out their understanding of our complex relationship to the natural world, a relationship which we see investigated more and more frequently through the mediating lens of representational technologies: writing, painting, photography, film, television, the Internet.
ENGL 290. Screen/Play Writing (Kallenberg)
ENGL 312. Literary Journalism (Havird)
As a genre, literary journalism puts to use such literary devices and techniques as plot, description, dialogue, character development, and personal style all the service of fact-based exposition and sometimes argumentation. We'll survey the genre using Kerrane and Yagoda's The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism (Scribner, 1998) and Sims and Kramer's Literary Journalism (Ballantine, 1995). In turn, you'll each produce original work including a 3000-word nonfiction narrative based on the on-site gathering of facts and other research—to be critiqued in conference and workshop.
ENGL 315. The Essay (Newtown)
This course will be run as a workshop for the production of literary nonfiction. It places student efforts within the context of readings selected from classical, modern, and contemporary essays.
ENGL 316. Writing for the Mass Media (Strange)
This advanced writing communication course focuses on print and broadcast journalism techniques and styles. You have opportunity here to particularly hone your magazine, newspaper, radio, and television writing skills. We will read contemporary examples, think on ethical issues, try the various genres under research and deadline pressures, and revise for stylistic excellence. We will also connect design with the writing using Adobe InDesign. The writing practice this course affords should diversify well the portfolios of students pursuing writing careers.
ENGL 331. The Lyric in English (Havird)
An intensive study of the short poem, including theoretical statements on the genre by such poets as Sidney, Jonson, Wordsworth, Emerson, Arnold, and Ransom.
ENGL 332. Seminar in the Novel: American (Hendricks)
In this seminar, we will read not only such well-known works as James's The Aspern Papers, Chopin's The Awakening, and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby but also several lesser-known but nonetheless important novels as Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance, Melville's Pierre, or the Ambiguities, and London's Burning Daylight.
ENGL 369. History of Film from 1939 to the Present (Hendricks)
In this course we will study primarily narrative cinema from the end of the classical Hollywood period (the late 1930s) up to the present. We will look at various genres, movements, and themes (for example: film noir and the Western; Italian Neo-Realism and French New Wave; communism in Hollywood in the 50s and the threat/promise of the digital) that are central to understanding film as a major art form and significant cultural document. Texts include Cook, A History of Narrative Film and Belton, American Cinema/American Culture.
ENGL 382. Radio Broadcasting (Laffy)
This course is a workshop in radio history, production, and station management. The class works in close association with the student-operated KSCL radio station, creating projects for possible broadcast. Students will read media texts, interact with local radio professionals, write scripts, and design programming.
ENGL 383. Digital Cultures (Hamming)
This course explores the intersections of technoculture, contemporary critical theory, literature, and film. It is a study of the ways technology— social, mechanical, and especially digital—have formed, reformed, and transformed our everyday experience. We will interrogate the language of cyberculture, expressions like the "information superhighway," "global village," and "cyberspace frontier." We will investigate the implications of new technologies on our notions of identity and society. Finally, we will revel in the strange and exciting world of cyber-sub-cultural artists, geeks, and hackers in an effort to understand the allure of cyberspace.
