English 208 offers introductory instruction in creative writing. Focusing on the forms, theories, and techniques of three genres--poetry, fiction, and drama--the course employs a workshop format to critique original student writing and to discuss out-of-class readings. A wide range of artistic and intellectual techniques and approaches will be considered. Discussions and written analyses of prosody, figurative language, narrative forms, and dramatic techniques will be fundamental aspects of instruction. A basic proficiency in the scansion of poetry will also be required. Students will read widely and will analyze published writings as well as the writings of other students throughout the semester. The goal of the course is to introduce students to the challenges of creative writing and to prepare beginning writers for intermediate-level workshops. Students will also be prepared to engage some of the paradoxes inherent in creative writing. Begin with two brief examples: Must writing “make sense” in order to “make meaning?” And is writing merely a way of putting “the best words in the best order” or is it “a way of taking life by the throat?”

This course provides an introduction to major literary genres and is designed to help students enjoy literature, and read and write thoughtfully. A manageable reading list will enable us to give critical consideration to the plays, poetry, and short fiction we study. In addition to active engagement with each piece, we will explore how basic literary modes and techniques function in the literature. Coursework will include active participation/discussion, written assignments and an oral project.

This course surveys English literature from the Anglo-Saxon period to the middle of the eighteenth century, encompassing a number of major writers and important genres and themes. The course aims to provide a basic context for understanding literature written during the first millenium of English literary history by focusing on the historical and cultural contexts in which the literature was written and the changing conventions it employs. You will be expected to learn a fair amount of history: names, dates, and cultural terminology. This is a crash course on all the chronological background you may have missed out on but which is crucial for understanding the origins and early development of western culture.

In this survey class, we will study the complexity of British literature, from the Romantic Period through the Victorian Age and modernism to postmodernism. Our goal is twofold: First, immersing ourselves mainly in the genres of poetry, novel, and drama, we will analyze “major” British writers and their works; second, trying to define what constitutes British literature, we will investigate how authors from diverse background interact with the canon and write back to established literary traditions. In other words, this course will give you a sense of literary history and an understanding of how British literature and its readers have developed in the past century and a half. The course will combine lecture and discussion.

What you write about, and the manner in which you write, has a lot to do with the society you come from.  No man is an island, and this is certainly true of the American writers we examine in English 275.  All of these authors have been significantly shaped by the America they lived in - an experience that diverged greatly over the last 400 years depending on the race, gender, and economic status of the American.

Thus, by necessity this course takes a historical approach to literature, providing an understanding of the larger social milieu that each author lived in.  We then look at the poems, plays, essays and short stories from these writers in terms of how they simultaneously reflect both the unique author and the prevailing society.  Beginning with writings by the 16th C. Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca, we'll move to Bradford's Plymouth Plantation, then early colonial writers, the romantics Poe and Hawthorne, democratic Walt Whitman and Frederick Douglas, and the New Women - Edith Wharton and Sui Sin Far.  The second half of the course focuses on the 20th century, featuring leading writers in the movements of Modernism, the Harlem Renaissance, Post-Modernism and Multi-Culturalism.  All readings will be from the Norton Anthology of American Literature (shorter 6th Edition), totalling approx. 30 pages a week.

This is a very hands-on course with 40% of the total grade being participation:  quizzes, homework, group work, and short writing assignments.  The remaining 60% is comprised of two mid-terms and a final.  Sick of Paris Hilton and the War in Iraq?  Let's escape into a different America - a younger America - and read what diverse talents have to say about life in this ever-changing nation.

A basic introductory course in language and linguistics--this class is primarily designed to introduce 'non-linguistic' majors to general concepts of language and linguistics. The course is organized in a 'bottom-up' fashion--from smallest to largest segments of language structure in keeping with the spirit of the text--by starting with 'Sounds' (Phonology), working through 'Words' (Morphology), and ending with 'Sentences' (Syntax). A note on the nature of child language acquisition is offered as well as some discussion of language processing and language disorders.

What do we know that allows us all to use use the languages we  use?  How do we come to know this?  And how do we implement this knowledge and integrate it with other things we come to know in our "24/7" use of  languages?  In ENGL 301  students study some answers to these questions,  they learn about some ways of understanding the  "inner workings" of language,  and they begin asking even more questions about it.  

How does English work?  What do we mean when we talk about its grammar?  What are we listening to when we think we hear English?  How do we recognize, learn, and create  the words of the language?  Why does Jabberwocky "make sense"?  How are sentences put together?  What happens when we move from forms of spoken English to its written forms?  What forms of spoken and written English are privileged?  How can we control and use them, putting such use into the context of this course's original question: "how does English work?"  Students in ENGL 302 will consider all of these questions and more, as they study and evaluate some answers to them.

This course is a basic introduction to English grammar based on traditional, structural and transformational theories. Some applications of linguistics to the teaching of English and the language arts are suggested. This introductory grammar course is primarily designed (i) to allow students to gain a sufficient amount of 'explicit' knowledge of English grammar and (ii) to provide students with the tools necessary for understanding language structure. The course is divided into three basic levels of language as a whole: Sound (phonology), Word (morphology) and Sentence (structure, syntax and transformations). The rationale for English 302 is to provide students with both theoretical and practical knowledge of English grammar to meet the needs of prospective teachers who plan to teach either English in secondary school programs--including ESL--or the language arts in elementary/high school programs.

This course is a basic introduction to English grammar based on traditional, structural and transformational theories. Some applications of linguistics to the teaching of English and the language arts are suggested. This introductory grammar course is primarily designed (i) to allow students to gain a sufficient amount of 'explicit' knowledge of English grammar and (ii) to provide students with the tools necessary for understanding language structure. The course is divided into three basic levels of language as a whole: Sound (phonology), Word (morphology) and Sentence (structure, syntax and transformations). The rationale for English 302 is to provide students with both theoretical and practical knowledge of English grammar to meet the needs of prospective teachers who plan to teach either English in secondary school programs--including ESL--or the language arts in elementary/high school programs.

Welcome to English 305, an intermediate course in expository writing available to students who have completed their lower division writing requirement. This course provides preparation for the Upper Division Writing Proficiency Exam (UDWPE), satisfies the writing requirement in the Liberal Studies major, and provides an additional opportunity for students to review, reassess, and further develop their writing and research skills. Important aims of the course include: Discovering your own "voice," developing a variety of writing styles developing a sensitivity to the impact of language, improving your ability to use appropriate research methods and materials, improving skills in standard written English, and developing computer and Internet competency. During the semester you will be asked to produce a variety of writing, including short written responses to the readings, multiple drafts of several expository essays, an analytical essay on your writing process, WPE practice exams, and a collaborative research presentation.

Welcome to English 305OL PACE, an intermediate course in expository writing available to students who have completed their lower division writing requirement. This course provides preparation for the Upper Division Writing Proficiency Exam (UDWPE), satisfies the writing requirement in the Liberal Studies major, and provides an additional opportunity for students to review, reassess, and further develop their writing and research skills. Important aims of the course include: Discovering your own "voice," developing a variety of writing styles developing a sensitivity to the impact of language, improving your ability to use appropriate research methods and materials, improving skills in standard written English, and developing computer and Internet competency. During the semester you will be asked to produce a variety of writing, including short written responses to the readings, multiple drafts of several expository essays, an analytical essay on your writing process, WPE practice exams, and a collaborative research presentation. NOTE: This class will meet LIVE online for the four Saturday classes. Technical Requirements: Students will need to have access to the Internet, either Netscape or Microsoft Explorer, and an Email account. Instructions will be provided for all computer activities; you may visit CSUN's Office of Online Instruction website for information on online courses and programs. CSUN also provides information on computer resources and availability. Please be familiar with CSUN's online applications, particularly WebCT and HyperNews, prior to our first meeting.

This class is designed to prepare students for the type of writing which will be required in their professional lives, and stresses writing appropriate to a variety of professional audiences and situations. The coursework will include business letters, short and long reports, resumes, informal presentations, briefs, memos, e-mails, and other business communications, as well as the conventions and etiquette specific to these communications. The course is linked with the school of public health, but the professional writing is applicable to every career field.

We will be stressing critical thinking, rhetorical strategies, professional ethics, and the reader-ready format essential to the business environment. Students will be simulating workplace projects by working individually as well as in collaborative settings.

Text is Successful Writing at Work, Eighth Edition, by Philip C. Kolin.

This class is designed to prepare students for the type of writing which will be required in their professional lives, and stresses writing appropriate to a variety of professional audiences and situations. The coursework will include business letters, short and long reports, resumes, informal presentations, briefs, memos, e-mails, and other business communications, as well as the conventions and etiquette specific to these communications. The course is linked with the school of public health, but the professional writing is applicable to every career field.

We will be stressing critical thinking, rhetorical strategies, professional ethics, and the reader-ready format essential to the business environment. Students will be simulating workplace projects by working individually as well as in collaborative settings.

Text is Successful Writing at Work, Eighth Edition, by Philip C. Kolin.

English 308 offers intermediate instruction in writing fiction. In focusing on modern and contemporary collections of short stories, the course presents intensive examinations of individual writers while also presenting a range of artistic and intellectual possibilities. Forms, theories, and techniques of the genre will be continuously examined, but this course chiefly employs a workshop format to critique original student writing and to discuss out-of-class readings. Students will read widely and will analyze published stories and the stories of other students throughout the semester. 308 assumes a previous introduction to figurative language and narrative forms, as well as some prior workshop experience. The goal of the course is to lead students further into the complexities of writing and revising short stories as well as to prepare developing writers for advanced-level workshops in fiction. However, the real subject of the workshop is the “Culprit--Life.” Students should enter the course not like “a patient etherised upon a table” but like a surgeon with an impatient scalpel. In other words, students should possess the ferocious calm of a woman about to cut through skin.

In this survey course, we will study African American Literature from a historical perspective. A manageable reading list will enable us to give critical consideration to the autobiographies, essays, poems and short fiction we study. In addition to exploring the major themes, genres and movements in African American literary tradition, we will consider rhetorical purpose and strategy. We will also examine the different places and spaces that African American authors have portrayed and created. Coursework will include active participation/discussion, written assignments and an oral project.

This course examines film’s representation of powerful dystopian novels such as George Orwell’s 1984, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes. A close look at the relationship between these texts and others will lay bare aesthetic and philosophical visions of post-apocalyptic, totalitarian, and corporate-run societies.

"An unexamined life is not worth living."  Popular culture is a large part of our lives today and thus warrants significant examination.  If you're an American and are not living under a rock, you are most likely involved in a deep, reciprocal relationship with popular culture:  it is helping to form who you are (or who you think you are, who you want to be) while simultaneously you, in turn, affect its creation and production.  Should the adage "I think, therefore I am" be changed to "I text, therefore I am"?  Should "Know thyself" be changed to "Know YouTube"?

English 313 asks you to get out of your comfort zone a bit and consider some of these questions.  We'll watch TV, listen to hip-hop, compare tatoos; but we'll do so in a way that gets us below the surface.  Sure, sports and movies are entertaining; but we'll learn that they're also political.  They shape the way we think, and are designed to make us think in particular ways that we may not be aware of - or even like.

Thus, this course requires a lot of hands-on participation.  You will be asked to watch TV, go to movies, buy breakfast cereal, listen to music - and complete short homework assignments which expand on these activities.  You'll be reading approx. 25 pages a week in the text Signs of Life in the U.S.A. (Maasik and Solomon) - and will be regularly quizzed on it.  There will be a couple of short analysis papers (2-3 pages) and a longer culminating research paper.  So hook up your TiVO, high speed your DSL, and join me in looking at Jackass in a way you never thought possible (I'll leave this up to your imagination).

The course will consider the history of popular culture studies and the reasons for studying/teaching popular culture. We’ll also examine selected popular culture topics and texts from Marxist, feminist, postcolonial, and queer perspectives. We’ll work with music videos and rap music, and engage with some of the debates around horror films (focusing on Hostel). Other texts will include the film Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Janice Radway’s book Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Culture.

Class meetings will be discussion-based. No tests or exams. Course requirements include careful and critical reading/viewing of all assigned texts, WebCT posts responding to readings/viewings, vigorous participation in class discussions, a collaborative oral presentation, and a mini-ethnography analyzing the consumers of a particular popular culture artist/text/genre.

Click here to view the tentative course syllabus.

This course introduces students to a wide range of themes and genres within American Indian literature: the oral tradition and tribal stories of creation, tricksters, and heroes; biographies of witnesses to the conflicts between Euro-Americans and American Indians; and poetry and fiction by Indians living in the 20th century. Among the modern authors covered will be Nicholas Black Elk, Joy Harjo, Simon Ortiz, Carter Revard, Leslie Marmon Silko and Sherman Alexie. American Indian literature is often times challenging because it presents a perspective "on nature, on human relations, on American history, on a sense of the sacred" radically different from mainstream America's. As we seek to understand what we read in class, we will explore our own perspectives and beliefs. The grade will consist of a mixture of quizzes, take-home exams, two papers, and a brief presentation.

This course will examine the purpose and methodology of writing about literature, focusing on the formal qualities of both literary texts and literary criticism. Students will learn the basics of analysing literature in terms of genre, form, and historical contexts through the examination of a selection of text of different types and from different periods. The course has a strong emphasis on two basic skill sets: (1) how does the literary critic ask and answer questions about literature, and (2) how does the literary critic present his or her analysis in written form.

This course will focus on the genre of the short story, beginning with some classics and moving to more contemporary work. A manageable reading list will enable us to both enjoy the fiction we study and give close critical consideration to these pieces. In addition to active engagement with each piece, we will explore how basic literary modes and techniques function in the literature. Coursework will include active participation and discussion, literary analysis, critical writing, and an oral project.

This course will focus on the genre of the short story, beginning with some classics and moving to more contemporary work. A manageable reading list will enable us to both enjoy the fiction we study and give close critical consideration to these pieces. In addition to active engagement with each piece, we will explore how basic literary modes and techniques function in the literature. Coursework will include active participation and discussion, literary analysis, critical writing, and an oral project.

Welcome to English 364 Online, an upper division general education course in the genre of the short story! In this discussion-based course, we will study a variety of stories with varying themes, written at different periods of time, and authored by a diverse group of writers. The goal of our course is to appreciate the short story as a genre of literature and to enhance students' analytical reading and writing skills. During the semester, you will learn to identify the elements of fiction, to trace different attitudes as seen in literature during different periods of writing, to evaluate style and thematic ideas, to discuss theoretical approaches to literature, to successfully navigate the Internet, and to engage in synchronous (live chat) and asynchronous (bulletin board) discussions, and to create and present a culminating group project. NOTE: This class will meet LIVE online EVERY Thursday from 7:00-9:30pm. This is a live discussion-based course, so please plan to be online for! the entire 2 1/2 hour class meeting. Technical Requirements: Students will need to have access to the Internet, either Netscape or Microsoft Explorer, and an Email account. Instructions will be provided for all computer activities; you may visit CSUN's Office of Online Instruction website for information on online courses and programs. CSUN also provides information on computer resources and availability. Please be familiar with CSUN's online applications, particularly WebCT and HyperNews, prior to our first meeting.

Arising from folklore, the Book of One Thousand and One Nights (in Arabic, كتاب ألف ليلة و ليلة‎ , Kitāb 'Alf Layla wa-Layla) is not only “Arabian” and “Persian” but in fact a multicultural collection that, over time, has come to include tales of Indian, Chinese, African, and even European origin. It is said to have first taken form between 800 and 900 AD, and yet no definitive manuscript exists that we can call “the original.” Ironically, its roots in classical Islamic culture have made it a touchstone for European-trained writers and readers (starting in 1704 with Galland’s famed French version). A veritable warehouse of European ideas about “the East,” the Nights has played a key role in popularizing Orientalism, making it ripe for post-colonial critique.

A multimedia phenomenon, The Nights comes to us not only in written and spoken tales, but also in the form of live-action and animated films, TV shows, program music, theater, picture books, comics, games, fashion, and other artistic media. A cursory look around confirms that, today, the Nights touches everything from videogaming to children’s publishing to the most complex of postmodern fiction.

English 392AN will explore the origins and enduring influence of this classic and controversial cycle. Required texts will include the contemporary Haddawy translation (1992) as well as excerpts from the famed Burton translation (1885-88), plus: Persian folktales; contemporary novels, including Salman Rushdie’s playfully metafictive Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Naguib Mahfouz’s darkly political Arabian Nights and Days; picture books, such as those of Ludmila Zeman; films or excerpts of films, including works by Korda, Harryhausen, Pasolini, and Disney Pictures; and relevant theory, definitely including the seminal (yet still controversial) Orientalism, by Edward Said. Course requirements will include spirited participation, an in-class presentation on an Arabian Nights-based text or media production (10 minutes), and a final seminar paper to be presented in class (20 minutes).

This course gives students the opportunity to hone their writing skills and apply these skills to forms of writing common to professions such as technical writing, publishing, public/government relations, corporate communications, and advertising. Students will complete a news release, speech, print advertisement, brochure, fund-raising letter, and PowerPoint presentation, and learn strategies for completing these assignments on the tight deadlines common in the workplace. Students will also create effective job application materials, including a resume, cover letter, and portfolio. English 407 is also the prerequisite for English 494EIP (offered spring 2008), a professional writing internship in the communications division of a local corporation or small business. For more information, please access the English Intern Program Website at www.csun.edu/english/intern/

In this course, we will be developing criteria and resources for selecting and critiquing children's texts, exploring methods for engaging children with literature, and developing an understanding of the socio-political implications and controversies embedded in texts written for (or adopted by) children. Course grade based on: journal entries examining books outside the course syllabus, a presentation, a mid-term essay examination, a term paper, a final project, and class participation. Texts: Charlotte Huck's Children's Literature in the Elementary School, selected critical readings, and several illustrated books and middle school novels.

This course will introduce you to various titles associated with young adult literature (in the form of the novel, short story, historical fiction, and poem) and some of the common theoretical and pedagogical issues surrounding these titles. Although we will read and discuss a number of popular young adult titles throughout the semester, the subject matter of the course will (roughly) be divided into two parts. The first part will entail a broad overview of young adult literature, focusing specifically on its publishing history, subject matter, and reading audience. The second part will focus on issues surrounding the use of young adult literature in the secondary school curriculum, including discussion of pedagogy, bibliotherapy, and censorship.

This course will introduce you to various titles associated with young adult literature (in the form of the novel, short story, historical fiction, and poem) and some of the common theoretical and pedagogical issues surrounding these titles. Although we will read and discuss a number of popular young adult titles throughout the semester, the subject matter of the course will (roughly) be divided into two parts. The first part will entail a broad overview of young adult literature, focusing specifically on its publishing history, subject matter, and reading audience. The second part will focus on issues surrounding the use of young adult literature in the secondary school curriculum, including discussion of pedagogy, bibliotherapy, and censorship.

Pictures talking back to words, and words to pictures: this dialogue is one of the hallmarks of our time. As W.J.T. Mitchell argues in Picture Theory, our culture has taken, is taking, a “pictorial turn”: pictures and visible language are intermixing freely, through ever denser and more sophisticated means, including hypertext, spatial and graphic design, and diverse artistic practices. The relationship between picture and word manifests in everyday media (weblogs, billboards, magazines), in popular literary and visual forms (comics, picture books, graffiti), and in the high arts (artists’ books, installations, painting).

ENGL 430, will, first, study the word/image relationship in an abstract sense, looking at what intellectuals have said over time about the alleged differences between words and pictures; and, second, take a close, concrete look at hybrid literary-artistic works that blend the visual and the verbal: in Mitchell’s phrase, imagetexts. These will include concrete and pattern poetry, artists’ books, illustrated novels, children’s picture books, comics, and hypertext.

Course requirements will include a mixed-media reading journal and/or blog; a group presentation (15 to 20 minutes) regarding a contemporary artist who works with images and words; a take-home midterm exercise (2 to 3pp,); and a final critical paper (4 to 6 pp.) on an artist or work of your choosing. Journal entries will include reports on guest speakers and field trips.

Modernism was a pan-European and transatlantic phenomenon that aimed "to be an avenue for all those vivid and violent ideas" about human consciousness and artistic representation that boiled up and over in early twentieth-century Western culture. Nonetheless, the people behind the (in)famous manifesto that appeared in Blast! magazine in 1914 also claimed that "The Modern World is due almost entirely to Anglo-Saxon genius,--its appearance and its spirit." This same group went so far as to claim that "great artists in England are always revolutionary." Our class will examine the specifically British and Irish strands of Modernism, as well as their relations with "cousins" in other parts of the western world, in order to determine what kind of revolution British Modernism was. The class will look what it did with the forms of British literature and the ideas of European culture—and why.

English 465 offers an intensive guide to literary criticism and to writing methodologies, as well as a survey of conflicting philosophical perspectives on the art of fiction. By the end of the course, students will be able to participate in ongoing debates by writers about the nature and aims of writing. They will also be able to write authoritatively about prominent literary theories, and they will be able to generate creative responses to those theories, both in their analytical reflections and in their narrative innovations. The essays written in this course will push beyond the elementary skills of summary and comparison/contrast to exemplify close readings of texts using sythetical or connective thought. Students will demonstrate connective thinking by forming independent links between readings and by extending a dialogue between those texts into projects of original criticism and imaginative writing. If poets are the “unacknowledged legislators” of the world, then critics make up the judicial branch. And if the artist’s job is “to pose the question,” the critic’s job is to follow the question--like Theseus following the thread. In other words, each student should, by the end of the semester, be prepared to slay a minotaur with a thesis.

From 1900 to the present, Britain has undergone enormous changes as far as technological advancement, economic structure, imperial status, gender roles, popular culture, and multiculturalism are concerned. In the arts and literary history, the time span between 1900 to the present has been characterized by the shift from modernism to postmodernism. In this class, we will excavate continuties and ruptures between modernism and postmodernism and probe the extent to which our texts create a dialogue with a multi-layered past. Themes under scrutiny will include modernist experimentation and narrative technique; the portrayal of the city; reactions to modernity; the representation of war; “civilization and its discontent”; the representation of the body; intertextuality and writing back to the canon; reconfiguring identity. In our analysis, we will focus on James Joyce, Dubliners; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; E.M. Forster, Howard’s End; D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love; Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are not the Only Fruit; Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children; Zadie Smith, On Beauty; David Dabydeen, The Intended. The course will combine lecture and discussion.

What do "Riverdance" and Carnival have in common? Why does Roddy Doyle's "The Commitments" contain the line "The Irish are the blacks of Europe"? How and where does J.M. Synge's "The Playboy of the Western World" meet Mustapha Matura's "The Playboy of the West Indies?" What do Victorian political cartoons depicting African Americans and the Irish have in common? What are the rhetorical structures of the marching season in Northern Ireland? Why should we, as scholars in the various disciplines of English, look at or even care about such things? This class will examine the act of cultural analysis itself, attempting to define the term "culture" and assessing the sources and methods of cultural analysis at issue in different disciplines. We will then examine the kinds of cultural representations outlined above, reading and analyzing this variety of cultural "texts" to determine the values and ideas at issue. In other words, in examining the history of Ireland and the Irish diaspora through a range of aesthetic representations (plays, novels, film) and cultural practices (e.g. Orange Order marches, popular entertainment), our class will critique the ways in which culture is produced, performed, transmitted, and translated. For the final project, you will take on the role of cultural critic, practicing your own analysis of the relationships between history, literature, language, and performance.

English 495ESM is the capstone course for CSUN English Subject Matter students. English Subject Matter students are welcome, along with Credential Preparation students and any other interested English majors. Unlike the usual English senior seminar, this class does not require a research paper; instead, students will create a final portfolio of their best work produced during the semester. Work will be individual and collaborative.

This unique course focuses on literacy in multiple genres (poetry, myth, world short fiction, and media). Students will develop short analytic papers and creative responses for most genres. For example, students will analyze a myth and then create a “myth web site”; we'll also study and write poetry. The course's multigenre, multimedia, and transnational compass makes it innovative and comprehensive. It both fulfills California standards for credential candidates and grounds this fulfillment in cutting edge scholarship in the fields of English studies. In its broad interpretation of genre and literacy, the course reviews, synthesizes, and builds on previous work in the English major in critical theory, literature, and expository writing. Technology is integrated into all components of the course. English 495ESM also provides the opportunity to develop analytic and creative skills around specific topics and genres relevant to the teaching of English at the secondary school level, and to reflect on work in the course in the context of future teaching practices. An understanding that English 495ESM students and their future secondary school students must situate their reading, writing, and thinking in a global context informs the course's commitment to examining texts from around the world.

This course should be good preparation for the culminating exit interview for students in the English Subject Matter and Credential Preparation programs.  Click here to view the tentative syllabus.

In this course, we will be examining traditional folk and fairy tales such as Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin, and Little Red Riding Hood, juxtaposing them with cross-cultural and modern variants. Class discussion will focus around such questions as: What constitutes a "feminist" fairy tale? What gender roles are offered to both female and male characters in these tales? How are traditional gender representations reified? Deconstructed? What new representations are offered? And how are all of these issues played out in the often lavishly illustrated children's books now available? What gender roles--new and old--are these books displaying/creating/disseminating for the child reader? We will examine graphic design elements as well as literary concerns. Course grade based on presentation, critical response journals, term paper, midterm, final exam.

THIS COURSE WILL SATISFY ANY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING ENGLISH MAJOR REQUIREMENTS: TWENTIETH CENTURY; LITERATURES OF CULTURAL DIVERSITY; SENIOR SEMINAR (495)Studies of literature produced about and after the decline of European empires by writers from their former colonies form one of the most recent and fastest-growing areas in literary study. Works by authors born somewhere other than Britain now comprise almost fifty percent of the material in the twentieth-century volume of the Norton Anthology of English Literature. This course looks at the literary voices of Britain's "Others"—writers from South Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Ireland—in an effort to determine what postcolonial literature is and what this material has contributed to the vital, vibrant, and newly expansive concept of Anglophone literature. To do so, we will combine close-reading/explicating these literary texts with analyzing arguments from post-colonial theory and criticism. Authors include Chinua Achebe, Salman Rushdie, Ama Ata Aidoo, Anita Desai, Jean Rhys, James Joyce, V.S. Naipaul. .

Modern representations of childhood are grounded in assumptions of children’s purity and innocence--consider our desire to protect children from harsh realities and preserve what we believe is their “rosy, cozy” view of the world. Paradoxically, we adults also fear the potentially anarchic power that may reside in children; modern thrillers intended for adult audiences exhibit radically uncontrolled children who pose physical threats not only to specific adults but also to general social stability. At the confluence of these desires and fears, we seek to control children through the images we present to them. From at least the mid-eighteenth century through today, adults have used such representations as a means of socialization: transmitting ideology, repressing children, and assuring adult mastery. Drawing from feminist and post-colonial criticism, we will explore the ideological ramifications of defining and representing “the child” and “childhood,” examining images and representations of children in a variety of overlapping forums: novels, picture books, child-rearing manuals and visual art. Texts we will examine include: The History of Miss Goody Two-Shoes, Little Red Riding Hood, Alice in Wonderland, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Bad Seed, The Gashleycrumb Tinies, and Captain Underpants. The course grade will be based on active participation, several short papers and a longer research paper.

This particular section of English 595WW treats a field of 20th Century women’s writing that has had a revolutionary impact on English studies in the past fifty years: feminist theory. We’ll engage primarily with recent US feminist theory, situating this work in the histories and politics of postcoloniality. Topics will include the feminist “sex wars,” feminism and race, feminism and postmodernism, “men in feminism,” feminist film theory, and specific feminist theories in various areas of English studies. We’ll end by reading Jane Gallop’s scandalous memoir, Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment. We’ll also watch some Madonna music videos, and hopefully we’ll be able to see Chantal Akerman’s ground-breaking feminist film, Jeanne Dielman.

Seminar meetings will be discussion-based. No tests/exams. Course requirements will include critical reading/viewing of all assigned texts (theoretical writings, music videos, a film, student-selected readings, a novel), vigorous participation in class discussions, a 20 page seminar paper, and a collaborative oral presentation on one of five topics: 1) feminist literary theory, 2) feminist rhetoric and composition theory, 3) feminist linguistics theory, 4) feminist creative writing theory, 5) feminist theory and the K-12 classroom. This course may be counted toward all options in the English M.A. program.

Click here to view the tentative syllabus.

I teach English 604 as a survey of the major subfields of linguistics: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, discourse analysis, pragmatics, and (American) dialects. I use two traditional tests to evaluate your understanding of phonetics through semantics (rather than asking you to “Discuss the significance of the phoneme” in an essay). In the last part of the class you will learn how to collect and analyze naturally occurring conversational data from a linguistic perspective. You then are asked to write a paper comparing your naturally occurring data to a creative work of your choice such as a play, novel, poem, screenplay etc. Texts: Edward Finegan, Language: Its Structure and Use, and George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By. I assume no prior knowledge of linguistics, but a sense of humor is required.

Two of the dominant names in American Indian fiction are Louise Erdrich and Leslie Marmon Silko. Their works have helped define the very category of contemporary American Indian literature; Erdrich’s Love Medicine and Silko’s Ceremony are perhaps the two most-discussed novels in the field. The first half of the semester will be reading three novels by Erdrich that follow generations of families on the Turtle Mountain Objibwe Reservation – Tracks, Love Medicine, and The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. (Another text may be added.) The second half of the semester will look at books by Silko – Ceremony, Almanac of the Dead, and Gardens in the Dunes. Students will be responsible for presentations on academic articles concerning these texts and for contributing to and leading discussions. The class will culminate in a research paper on one of the authors.

This class will examine how meaning is derived both from the materiality of the text and from the part it plays in social situations. We will focus on texts from two periods during the Middle Ages, the Anglo-Saxon period (roughly 500-1100) and the fourteenth century, looking at how these texts were written and read, and how their meanings relate to the technologies and performances by which they were produced. In the process, we will consider the impact of the transition from oral to scribal culture and from memory to written record on the categories we call ‘literature’ and ‘information’. This will be a demanding course, and students should be willing to engage with the original language and script of medieval texts. We will be looking at manuscript facsimiles online, so regular internet access is essential. As part of our examination of the technology of textuality, we will be reflecting on the means by which modern digital texts are produced. The creation of web pages and the learning of some basic HTML will be a required part of the course.

Students wishing to get ahead on their reading over the summer should order Andrew Galloway, Medieval Literature and Culture (New York: Continuum, 2006). This is a basic (and short) introduction to the literature and history of medieval England, as well as the critical issues students can expect to meet in studying the literature of the medieval period.

This graduate seminar on the history of rhetoric, rhetorical theory, and composition begins with Nietzsche’s devastating observation, “Is dialectics only a form of revenge in Socrates?” The answer to that question has shaped the contemporary reception of classical and modern rhetoric as well as composition studies and teaching in general—today’s educators strive for a democratic classroom by recognizing how meaning making is always-already rhetorical and political.

To that end, this course surveys the most influential texts in the field along with equally powerful non-canonical works. Readings explore how the rhetorical tradition informs present-day writing instruction and conceptions of language and human relations. Class discussions bridge literacy, rhetoric, politics, and the institutionalization of writing instruction so that by the semester’s end we’ll answer Nietzsche’s question with another: How are “rights,” “accountability,” and “responsible citizens” part of the problem?

Class meetings are discussion-oriented and open-ended. Coursework focuses on reading, writing, and discussion. No tests or exams.

This course will provide an introduction to the major modes of inquiry used to explore the field of composition studies both from a theoretical/philosophical perspective and from a research perspective. To understand the nature of composition as a field of academic inquiry involves exploration into the writer, the texts writers produce, and the situations in which writing occurs, especially within the writing classroom. We will consider the varied ways in which these areas have been and could be studied. The course requires working with bibliographical resources, major journals and internet resources in the field as a way to ground oneself in the discipline. By the end of the course, students should not only be able to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of various studies in the field but should also be able to design research projects to answer their own concerns as teachers and scholars.