This course is an introductory workshop in creative writing. The emphasis of this class is on student responses to structured exercises designed to familiarize them with the form and process of writing poetry, short fiction, and drama. Students will participate in small-group workshops as well as full-class workshops. We will discuss professional and student material to try to determine how a writer creates material, what works, what does not work, and why. The goal of this course is to provide a safe environment for the beginning writer to nurture his or her own writing life. All workshop comments must be delivered in a spirit of constructive discussion. Students should be prepared to discuss all assigned readings.

Course Outline and Rationale:

English 255 is designed for non-English majors and fulfills General Education requirements. Students must have successfully completed Freshman Composition, or its equivalent, and should have command of basic writing skills.

Additionally, this is a process-oriented literature course constructed to promote your active and critical thinking abilities, as well as your academic writing skills. In this class we will engage in close readings and respond to various literary genres which will include short stories, a novel, drama and poetry. Also, we will discuss basic literary elements such as plot, character, setting, theme, narrative voice, irony and structure among others, as they help inform the various works. Over the course of the semester we will explore, reflect and express ideas concerning these discourses and through our written work we will convey insightful information in writing that is logical and that supports adequate scholarly research for our arguments.

A survey of American writers from the beginning of American settlements to the current period, including major writers such pilgrim William Bradford, transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau, mid-nineteenth century poets Whitman and Emily Dickinson, realists James, Melville, and Rebecca Harding Davis, regionalists Sarah Jewett, Kate Chopin, and Edith Wharton, and modernists Frost, Hemingway, Faulkner, as well as Harlem Renaissance writers, Beats, and contemporaries Adrienne Rich and Alberto Rios. We read two novels: Clemens’ Huckleberry Finn and Vonnegut’s God Bless You Mr. Rosewater. We study specific works in detail, learn about historical, aesthetic, and cultural factors shaping American life and literature, and survey some of the painting of the various periods. Students will take reading quizzes, a mid-term, and a final exam, and write one or two short analytical papers. Regular attendance is crucial, class participation required. Texts: The Norton Anthology of American Literature 8th (Shorter Edition) Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater.

In Democratic Vistas, Walt Whitman envisions an American literature in which the poet would sing of “a simple, separate person,” yet also “utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.” A century later, Susan Sontag would write, “What we have left of Whitman's discredited dream of cultural revolution are paper ghosts and a sharp-eyed witty program of despair.” For both these writers “America” represents not only a place, but an imaginative act. In this course, we will examine how writers from Tocqueville to Toni Morrison have attempted to define the individual's place in an American culture, and, in so doing, we will examine the “America” they invent. We not only will read major American writers such as Cooper, Hawthorne, Whitman, Dickinson, Jewett, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Wright, Cisneros and Wilson, but will also ask why we might consider these authors “major.” Students will write two essays and take a midterm and final exam.

This is a survey of American literature from the colonial period to the present. Through poetry, prose, fiction, and drama, the course introduces students to the range of voices that have filled the continent -- American Indian, European, African, and Asian. Through our readings we will trace major themes in American culture through various time periods: nature, family, history, religion, race, class, gender. We will focus on articulating our personal responses to the things we read, and we also will try to understand the readings within their own historical and cultural contexts. The grade will consist of a variety of quizzes, exams, and one paper.

A survey of American writers from the beginning of American settlements to the current period, including major writers such pilgrim William Bradford, transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau, mid-nineteenth century poets Whitman and Emily Dickinson, realists James, Melville, and Rebecca Harding Davis, regionalists Sarah Jewett, Kate Chopin, and Edith Wharton, and modernists Frost, Hemingway, Faulkner, as well as Harlem Renaissance writers, Beats, and contemporaries Adrienne Rich and Alberto Rios. We read two novels: Clemens’ Huckleberry Finn and Vonnegut’s God Bless You Mr. Rosewater. We study specific works in detail, learn about historical, aesthetic, and cultural factors shaping American life and literature, and survey some of the painting of the various periods. Students will take reading quizzes, a mid-term, and a final exam, and write one or two short analytical papers. Regular attendance is crucial, class participation required. Texts: The Norton Anthology of American Literature 8th (Shorter Edition) Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater.

I'm going to be honest with you:  this is a depressing class.  Ever since atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, well... writers have not felt really whippy about the way things were going.  Contemporary literature is not generally up-beat.  But it is fascinating, especially when it looks at how even though mankind is extremely technically advanced, we still tend to spend a lot of time hurting ourselves and others.  And having sex.  No matter how scientifically savvy we seem to get, humans simply cannot eliminate their ancient animalistic urges.

This class will examine novels, plays, short stories and poetry written after 1945 that grapple with the ways in which humanity tries to control its innate drive to kill and/or procreate.  Some of the material is actually funny.  All of it is extremely deep.  Many of the reading assignments will be long (and you will be quizzed on them).  But if you're not afraid to write two essays, take a final, and search your soul... this is the course for you.

English 301, Language and Linguistics, is an introduction to linguistics, the science of language. This course will introduce you to the main subdisciplines of linguistics: phonetics (the sounds of language), phonology (the sound systems of language), morphology (word formation), syntax (the structure and function of phrases and clauses), and semantics (meaning). We will also examine how children learn their first language and how others learn a second language. The final project for this course will consist of collecting slang words used on the CSUN campus and elsewhere. While much of the discussion will be based on American English, we will also contrast the structures of English with structures from other languages. We will attempt to understand language as both a cognitive and a social phenomenon. No prior knowledge of linguistics is required.

A basic course in Language and Linguistics. Starting with a fundamental introduction showing how 'Language' is 'Biological' in nature (a biological basis for language), the class then follows a natural course of inquiry designed to introduce students to general concepts of language. The course is organized in a 'bottom-up' fashion--from smallest to largest segments of language structure--by starting with 'Sounds' (Phonology), working through 'Words' (Morphology), and ending with 'Sentences' (Syntax). Subsequent topics ranging from language acquisition to language disorders are briefly touched upon.

English 301, Language and Linguistics, is an introduction to linguistics, the science of language. This course will introduce you to the main subdisciplines of linguistics: phonetics (the sounds of language), phonology (the sound systems of language), morphology (word formation), syntax (the structure and function of phrases and clauses), and semantics (meaning). We will also examine how children learn their first language and how others learn a second language. The final project for this course will consist of collecting slang words used on the CSUN campus and elsewhere. While much of the discussion will be based on American English, we will also contrast the structures of English with structures from other languages. We will attempt to understand language as both a cognitive and a social phenomenon. No prior knowledge of linguistics is required.

If you speak English, why is it still hard to learn "grammar"? In this course we will examine grammar as more than just a set of rules which you have to memorize to produce acceptable speech and writing. We will survey the ways in which sound and structure work to produce meaning in Standard English, as well as some non-standard grammatical systems. Using insights from linguistic theory to arrive at a more sophisticated notion of grammar, we will discuss the implications of this understanding for English usage and pedagogy. I suggest that you take this course after English 301.

English 302, , Introduction to Modern Grammar, is an upper-division course that focuses on two significant areas of grammar: morphology (the study of word structure) and syntax (how words relate to each other and combine into phrases, clauses,  and sentences). The goal of the course is to provide a thorough overview of the grammar of contemporary English. Discussion centers on traditional and theoretical approaches, plus the application of linguistic principles to the teaching of English and the language arts.

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.

The goal of this course is to expand upon your existing knowledge of English grammar to develop a comprehensive and detailed understanding of the regularity and patterning observed in the everyday use of spoken and written English, primarily at the level of syntax.

There are at least five major objectives for ENGL302
To understand as much as possible about the structural characteristics of American English:  its system of word structure, and its phrase and sentence patterns.
To learn the terminology used to describe the structures and system of English.
To learn about the linguistic principles that are at the root of the descriptions of these structures and systems.
To be able to apply these principles in the analyses of new data in contexts of language use.
To appreciate the implications of particular attitudes that color the study of a language and its structures.

The goal of this course is to expand upon your existing knowledge of English grammar to develop a comprehensive and detailed understanding of the regularity and patterning observed in the everyday use of spoken and written English, primarily at the level of syntax.

There are at least five major objectives for ENGL302
To understand as much as possible about the structural characteristics of American English:  its system of word structure, and its phrase and sentence patterns.
To learn the terminology used to describe the structures and system of English.
To learn about the linguistic principles that are at the root of the descriptions of these structures and systems.
To be able to apply these principles in the analyses of new data in contexts of language use.
To appreciate the implications of particular attitudes that color the study of a language and its structures.

The main goal of this course is to gain a conscious knowledge of written and spoken Standard English. While the basic approach will be descriptive in nature, we will use a variety of approaches, both traditional and modern. We will explore the sound system of English, differences between prescriptive and descriptive approaches to usage, the structure of words, parts of speech, and syntax. We will verify our data using textual examples culled from a variety of sources and finish by looking at a range of approaches to usage, style, and pedagogy.

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.

In English 305 we will focus on the writing process, which includes a workshop format. We will work to develop writing that exhibits clarity, coherence, style and a clear purpose. A critical lens of celebrities, their interaction with the media, and our response as audience will provide a fascinating backdrop for our study. This course provides partial preparation for the Upper Division Writing Proficiency Exam and satisfies the writing requirement in the Liberal Studies major.

A course in written composition, English 305 extends the skills learned in freshman composition. Students will develop a critical vocabulary and appropriate criteria for evaluating their writing with emphasis on developing a variety in sentence and paragraph structure, using the rhetorical modes to organize longer papers, and practicing library research methods. Students will also become familiar with the World Wide Web as a teaching and learning tool. Final grade is based on 3 expository essays; a short research paper and presentation; class participation which includes class discussions and weekly in-class freewrites or quizzes.

This course satisfies the writing requirement for Liberal Studies candidates. PREREQUISITES: freshman composition or the equivalent. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: English 302, Introduction to Modern Grammar. A Course Web page will be available for links to the syllabus, online readings, and Internet research resources.

Course Description (University Catalog):
Prerequisite: Completion of the lower division writing requirement. This intermediate course in expository writing includes a study of the style of competent writers and extends the writing skills acquired by students in the Freshman Composition course. Emphasis is placed on developing writing that exhibits clarity, coherence, style, and a clear purpose. This course provides preparation for the Writing Proficiency Exam (WPE) and satisfies the writing requirement for the Liberal Studies major.

 This class is conducted primarily in a workshop setting. The bulk of our time will be spent reading, writing, discussing, and working in groups. Students are responsible for reading the assignments before class in order to participate in the class discussions. Students will also be expected to bring to class or post the writing assignments as instructed, on the day they are due, with copies for group discussion when required.

English 305OL is 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. 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, practice WPE exams, and a collaborative research presentation. During the semester, you will learn to successfully navigate the Internet, and to engage in synchronous (live chat) and synchronous (bulletin board) discussions, and to create and present a culminating group project. NOTE: This class will meet online EVERY Thursday from 4:20-6:45pm. 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 Student Computing web site for information on online courses, programs, computer resources and availability. Please be familiar with WebCT prior to our first meeting.

English 305OL is 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. 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, practice WPE exams, and a collaborative research presentation. During the semester, you will learn to successfully navigate the Internet, and to engage in synchronous (live chat) and synchronous (bulletin board) discussions, and to create and present a culminating group project. NOTE: This class will meet online EVERY Thursday from 4:20-6:45pm. 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 Student Computing web site for information on online courses, programs, computer resources and availability. Please be familiar with WebCT 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, resumes, informal presentations, briefs, memos, short reports, e-mails, and other business communications, as well as the conventions and etiquette specific to these communications. A significant portion of the class is devoted to the research and drafting of a proposal and a long report on a topic of the student's choice; this is designed to give students the skills and strategies needed to master these challenging genres for graduate or professional work. 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, and will learn both time management and project management skills. Text is Successful Writing at Work, Eighth Edition, by Philip C. Kolin, and Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, by Atul Gawande.

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, resumes, informal presentations, briefs, memos, short reports, e-mails, and other business communications, as well as the conventions and etiquette specific to these communications. A significant portion of the class is devoted to the research and drafting of a proposal and a long report on a topic of the student's choice; this is designed to give students the skills and strategies needed to master these challenging genres for graduate or professional work. 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, and will learn both time management and project management skills. Text is Successful Writing at Work, Eighth Edition, by Philip C. Kolin, and Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, by Atul Gawande.

Course Description:
Prerequisite: Completion of the lower division writing requirement.

This course is an intermediate course in narrative writing. The students will participate in small-group workshops, as well as large-group workshops. We will discuss professional and student material to try to determine how a writer creates "story," what works, what doesn't work, and why. The goal of this course is to provide a safe environment for the writer to nurture his/her own writing life. This course is designed for those who have already taken English 208.

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.

The class will study selected literary works and the films that show or use (reconfigure) these stories. We bear in mind that a written work and a cinema are different modes for conveying stories, so discussions and assignments are directed toward description and analysis of intentions and results rather than a comparative better or worse. The films will include: Frankenstein, Clueless (derived from Jane Austen's Emma), Blade Runner (from Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), High Noon and Three-ten to Yuma (both Western short stories), Tennessee Williams's play The Glass Menagerie, plus film noir, fairy tale or children's story, foreign film, and a comedy or two (these last to be determined). Grades will be based on tests, one long paper, several short papers or exercises, and discussion participation.

Q: Why should we learn to look at popular culture more critically?

Q: How has Pop been studied, understood, critiqued, and debated by scholars? Who has the right, and the power, to determine how Pop is interpreted?

Q: How should we describe the audiences, or consumers, of Pop? Are they (we) simply victims or dupes, sucking up whatever the mass media have to offer? Or are we active agents, selectively bending and blending pop culture for our own critical purposes?

Expect all of these questions to be addressed in ENGL 313!

Assignments in 313 will include research, writing, and presentations about TV, video, and movies; new media, including the Net; and fan phenomena, such as sports fandom, fan fiction (fanfic), RPGs, music scenes, and "geek" culture.

Questions? Contact Prof. Hatfield at charles.hatfield@csun.edu.

This course is a study of contemporary popular culture, including commodity culture, advertising, television, and film. The course text is Signs of Life in the USA, 5th edition, and the course methodology is cultural semiotics. Students should be prepared to investigate the cultural mythologies behind our popular culture and to go beyond the surface of entertainment towards its significance. Students will write a researched semiotic analysis towards satisfaction of the IC requirement. English 313 also satisfies the Section E General Education requirement.

Q: Why should we learn to look at popular culture more critically?

Q: How has Pop been studied, understood, critiqued, and debated by scholars? Who has the right, and the power, to determine how Pop is interpreted?

Q: How should we describe the audiences, or consumers, of Pop? Are they (we) simply victims or dupes, sucking up whatever the mass media have to offer? Or are we active agents, selectively bending and blending pop culture for our own critical purposes?

Expect all of these questions to be addressed in ENGL 313!

Assignments in 313 will include research, writing, and presentations about TV, video, and movies; new media, including the Net; and fan phenomena, such as sports fandom, fan fiction (fanfic), RPGs, music scenes, and "geek" culture.

Questions? Contact Prof. Hatfield at charles.hatfield@csun.edu.

"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 forming who you are, yet, simultaneously, you 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 MySpace"? 

English 313 asks you to get out of your comfort zone a bit and consider these questions.  We'll watch TV, listen to music, compare tatoos; but we'll do so in a way that gets below the surface.   Lots of hands on participation is required, including buying cereal and modeling your shoes.  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.  Two short analysis papers (3-4 pages)  and a longer culminating reseach paper will be written.  So fire up your TiVO, high speed that DSL, and join me in looking at Jackass in a way you never thought possible (I'll leave this up to your imagination).

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.

Why do English majors love to read? We're interested in the world and the mystery of meaning; we're interested in what makes people tick, in how time, place, social context, language and character interact to inform and shape a piece of writing. In this class, reading an array of prose, poetry, and drama – and the literary critics who analyze these genres – we will examine the different methodologies for thinking about literature and writing about it. Sharing questions, insights, and enthusiasms, students will find the emphasis here is on attaining a level of mastery in their own written analysis as they add their voices to the ongoing conversation about literature.

The King James version of the Bible was a monumental work of translation. While not the first and certainly not the last in the English language, it has been a benchmark in stylistic excellence. Regarding its acceptance, it has been used by English speakers worldwide for centuries as an authority for Biblical reference. First published in 1611, it has been revered by Christians of many denominations and as an English-language source for various branches of Judaism (often printed along with the Masoritic text of the Jewish Bible, the so-called Old Testament, in Hebrew). The course surveys this classic work from Genesis to the Apocalypse (Revelation) with particular attention to its impact on English literature

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.

English 364 Online is 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 synchronous (bulletin board) discussions, and to create and present a culminating group project. NOTE: This class will meet online EVERY Wednesday from 7:00-9:45pm. This is a live discussion-based course, so please plan to be online for the entire 2 3/4 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 Student Computing web site for information on online courses, programs, computer resources and availability. Please be familiar with WebCT prior to our first meeting.

This popular, cutting-edge course, now offered for the fourth time, will give you an introduction (or reintroduction?) to comics and graphic novels as a form of visual narrative. Whether you’re a newcomer to comics or a long-time fan, you’ll come away from 396CO with a new appreciation of comics and graphic novels as literature, art, and culture.

In the course, you’ll practice using the visual language of comics, learn about the origins of comic books, and become an expert in the recent literary graphic novel movement. Most importantly, you’ll get to read some of the best work in comics, including a few classics and a handful of very recent (post-2005) works.

This course is available to English majors for elective credit. It’s also a good elective for majors in CTVA, Animation, Graphic Design, Illustration, Drawing, Multimedia, or Communication Studies!

OUR TEXTS: Our readings will encompass American, European, and Asian comics (including manga); nonfictional as well as fictional comics; and comics in a breathtaking variety of styles and moods. Authors covered may include Lynda Barry, Alison Bechdel, Jordan Crane, R. Crumb, Guy Delisle, Will Eisner, Gipi (Gianni Pacinotti), Los Bros Hernandez, George Herriman, Lat (Mohammad Nor Khalid), Scott McCloud, Rutu Modan, Alan Moore, Harvey Pekar, Marjane Satrapi, Art Spiegelman, Shaun Tan, Tezuka Osamu, Chris Ware, and others.

OUR WORKLOAD: Requirements for the course will include a report on a local comic book shop of your choosing, a creative (minicomic) project, contributions to a class listserv, a group presentation & blog, and a take-home final.

Contact Prof. Hatfield at charles.hatfield@csun.edu if you have questions!

In this course we will trace the history of English pronunciation, grammar, and writing, as well as the ways in which the English language has interacted with social and literary history. We will focus on both the theoretical concepts of English historical linguistics and the practical analysis of English literary texts to explore the ways in which dialectal distinctions and notions of correctness have affected people's perceptions of themselves and of others, and continue to do so today. In studying the ways in which English and attitudes towards language have changed over time, we will learn to read older and more recent literature in a more informed way, enhancing our understanding and appreciation of English as a medium of communication and a vehicle for literary expression.

As most students of English know, the language of Skakespeare and older versions of the Bible has changed considerably in the last few hundred years. To deal with this and other related issues, English 405 takes a look at this important language, from its earliest days in England to ways it is used in the United States today. The course examines the many historical and social factors that shape it, all to provide a better understanding of why people talk and (sound) the way they do. Special emphasis is placed on varieties that are (a) regional (e.g., that spoken in the American South, Northeast, and so on) and (b) social (e.g., Ebonics and Chicano English).

The Madness: What if existence is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to contemplate? What if the story of life has no clear beginning, middle, and end—no narrative arc? What if, instead, that story percolates out of a roiling cauldron of chaos? Perhaps, then, fiction and science are not separate enterprises but twin disciplines, conjoined by theories and probabilities instead of rules and resolutions. In that case, the writing workshop must be a laboratory of ceaseless experimentation where anything is possible and nothing is permitted. If you’re ready to embrace the paradox within that statement, then you’re ready for all the ambiguity inherent in English 408. First item in the Petri dish: must fiction make “sense” in order to create “meaning?”

The Method: 408 offers advanced instruction in writing fiction, with a focus on experimentation in structure and style. In the first half of the course, students will investigate key historical and contemporary renegades & mavericks, shamans & mad scientists, tricksters & philosophers, all the vanguards of the unfinished project of fiction. Students also will examine a range of artistic forms, along with shifting theories regarding the role of narrative in the genre. In the second half of the course, students will produce their own experimental fictions by employing the techniques of a specific literary style, such as formalism or fabulism. Throughout the semester, students will read widely and will analyze published stories and the stories of other students in oral presentations and in written responses. 408 assumes a previous introduction to figurative language and to conventional narrative forms, as well as some prior workshop experience.

English 408 is an advanced class in narrative writing, in which we will write, read, reflect, and think and talk critically about writing.  Along the way, what we think when we think about what we do when we are writing is likely to shift.

This class will be conducted as held in conversation held in dialogue with other writing and thinking about writing, and it will consist of exercise-based small workshops, lecture/discussions, and a whole group workshop in the end.  In particular, we will be trying to examine the nature and quality of resonance between and among the writing we are reading and doing.  To do so, as readers and writers, both, in this workshop, we will try to step back first and look at how we are approaching a particular story, and how that writing fits into its larger tradition.  We will try to become more self-conscious about our critical apparatus so that we may better use it to understand our writing practice and our purpose.  We will aim to create an informed community of writers that will challenge and support the individual writer, even as we seek to understand how to fit ourselves into the conversation of the writing that we love.

For this to happen, you must be willing to write and read a great deal, and to think systematically about both.  You will also be expected to treat the work of others with as much care and consideration as you give your own.  Finally, I hope (and I mean this) you will have fun.  

English 410—Advanced Dramatic Writing
Dr. Rick Mitchell

"(Theatre) needs no other passport than fun, but this it has got to have."  --Bertolt Brecht

The course's main emphasis will be the development of effective texts for performance. So in addition to doing lots of dramatic writing, in-class and out, we'll sometimes put student plays and scenes into performance and discuss the results. Process, of course, is hugely important here, which is why we'll be treating the classroom as a laboratory in which experimentation is not only permitted, but strongly encouraged. In addition to spending lots of time on student writing, we'll discuss a variety of published plays, as well as an array of approaches to performance and aesthetics. And we’ll spend a bit of time looking at how new media (and old) might be incorporated into performative writing, and vice versa. Towards the end of the semester (and maybe sooner), students will have an opportunity to present staged-readings of their work to the public through the Northridge Playwrights Workshop (perhaps in an off-campus theatre). Advanced students will be encouraged to work in longish dramatic forms—full-length plays and long one-acts—and we'll spend some time examining the challenges of creating an effective full-length play. We'll also discuss play-production opportunities and, if students are interested, MFA/PhD program options. This is, of course, a workshop-based class/lab, so regular participation is important. [Note: previous dramatic writing experience is not essential. Also, graduate students and other majors with an interest in dramatic writing are welcome. Of late, approximately half of the students taking 410 have been grad students. Four students from the last 410 class are currently working on MA theses in playwriting.]

In this course we will explore Geoffrey Chaucer's most important themes and literary strategies by reading most of The Canterbury Tales and some of Chaucer's other works in his original Middle English. The scope of the course also embraces the study of Chaucer's sources and literary analogues and will reflect on his influence on later writers.

Restoration plays are a high point in the long tradition of English literature. The period marks the return ("restoration") of Charles II to the throne of England in 1660 – his father was decapitated in 1649 – and he brought with him a love of things French, where he bided his time in exile until fervor for English Puritanism died down. Upon his return, theaters reopened with gaiety and zest; they had been banned for two decades. Also, women were allowed on stage, and nearly half of Restoration dramas had women authors. This latter introduces a topic of interest today, because their authorship was never a secret, but the literary canon in America denied them entrance anyway. When the professor took this same course – that would be I – his textbook had no plays by women or any discussion of their participation. Today they are half the textbook and the subject of the best and most current research.
Restoration plays are famous as sexual romps about husbands and wives, friends and lovers, and others in the mix. Audiences laugh at the fops, jilts and cuckolds – the fools of high society betrayed by their own lack of wit or by their own mates sneaking around on them. Character names tell us that: Lady Wishfort – sound it out – Sir Peter Teazle, Lady Sneerwell, Mrs. Loveit, Sir Fopling Flutter, Witwoud, Lady Easy, Lord Foppington. The list goes on. The greatest character to emerge was Mrs. Malaprop, whose name is a dictionary word today. We will read The Man of Mode, The Country Wife, The Rover, The Innocent Mistress, She Stoops to Conquer, A Bold Stroke for a Wife, among others. We will go to a performance if we can coordinate it for the whole class.
Tragedies were also written, several with political overtones, and the first musical comedy, The Beggar's Opera, was such an innovation that not until Gilbert and Sullivan 150 years later and our musical comedies on Broadway were any shows comparable to it. Great plays, interesting political and historical events and, of course, scandal – the period had its own Political Correctness enforcers determined to cram morality down everyone's throat. Just as we have today.

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.

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.

Course Description: (University Catalog) Study of form, content, and theme in children's literature, classic and contemporary, from pre-school to ninth-grade level. Pre-requisite: One lower-division course in literature.

English 428 is a class in children’s literature that covers picture books, fables, fairy tales, poetry, and novels. We will read, analyze and discuss various works from the above genres with the goal of developing criteria for selecting and critiquing children’s texts.

This class will require intensive reading as well as engaged participation in classroom projects and discussions; you will be learning from and teaching each other as well as from me, and so the success of this class depends on your active participation You are expected to read all of the assigned material and come to class prepared.

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 and censorship.

“Adolescence” is a controversial area, not least because it straddles the border between our ideas about childhood and our ideas about adulthood. In fact and in fiction, adolescence marks a period of change, of adjustment and self-definition.

What we expect of adolescents is not the “innocent" and "carefree" qualities of the stereotypical child. Rather, we tend to think about adolescents in terms of growth: growth into self-knowledge, growth into responsibility. This growth happens in relation to dominant social institutions: education, family, gender roles and courtship, manners and mores, law, economics, politics. In our culture, adolescence means negotiating among these institutions and coping with their life-defining power. It may also mean challenging that power and holding out the possibility of change – for young people have always been the harbingers and agents of social transformation.

No wonder adolescent literature – or, as they say in the marketplace, Young Adult literature – is such a vital, constantly-changing field. YA literature generates and reflects controversy because it targets a period of life filled with contradictions, a period shadowed by adult cares (and fears). In ENGL 429 we’ll take a look at how YA books today speak to these contradictions, and how they participate in our culture’s ongoing dialogue about adolescence. More specifically, we’ll discuss the controversies surrounding YA literature, including the continual struggle over censorship. We’ll consider the relationship between canonical (i.e., adult-approved) adolescent literature and non-canonical youth culture. We’ll analyze claims about “juvenile delinquency” and the alleged impact of popular culture on young people. Above all, we’ll talk about YA literature AS literature, as a genre that pushes the boundaries of what is possible artistically.

OUR READINGS will include books by Horatio Alger, Laurie Halse Anderson, M. T. Anderson, Lynda Barry, Aidan Chambers, Robert Cormier, Helen Frost, Walter Dean Myers, and others.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS will include an online journal or blog in response to our readings, a group presentation on a censored or challenged YA book, and a final critical essay with a research component.

We will examine some of the ways women have been portrayed in literature, both by themselves and by male authors.  Our focus will be primarily on fiction and particularly on voices raised by African American, Native American, Chicana, and Asian American women writers during the last hundred years.  We will look at how women have been defined by social and cultural expectation and how they have challenged, revised, or discarded the roles traditionally available to them.  Students will be asked to make an oral presentation as well as to complete written assignments and participate in discussions. 

Major Critical Theories is an historical survey of literary criticism and theory from the Classical era to the present, including Classicism, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, the New Criticism, Structuralism, Poststructuralism and Deconstruction, Feminism, Marxism, Psychoanalytic criticism, the New Historicism, Multiculturalism, Gender Studies, and Cultural Studies. Not a methods course, Major Critical Theories surveys the history of a long, often contentious and contradictory, conversation about literature, a conversation that has no hope of an absolute beginning and no prospect of an end. The course text is The Critical Tradition.

Here’s a question for writers I’m fond of posing:  in an age saturated with narrative, what might “count” as a viable strategy for narrative writers some fifty years after Saul Bellow called for a fiction that could not be filmed?  How is it possible to make, as Pound would have us, story-writing “new?”  Or, let’s agree that newness doesn’t matter and isn’t possible anyway:  how then are we to reconcile a post-modern consciousness with what I’ve always liked to call the private, enduring instinct behind the narrative impulse?

These are big questions, and this class will not answer but only explore them in the context of hybridity as one possible response to the writerly and readerly challenges they both proceeds from and poses.  We’ll begin with the question of hybridity itself—what it is, where it comes from, why, how it moves through the world?  Does hybridity grow out of culture, identity, genre, or language itself?  Is it even something we plan or something that we are/do when we come from/dwell in marginalized spaces and are compelled to write in dominant spaces?  And what does it look like anyway?  Might it promise a “new” way of telling stories, or does it represent, instead, an end of “telling stories?”  Where do we see the pieces of it and how do its edges cohere?  And is it a radical, experimental expression of narrative that is at least one response to the exhaustion of old forms?  Or might it be, a refusal to embrace the old forms that comes, instead, from the emergence of multiple new perspectives and voices—up to and including, possibly, yours?

These are just some of the questions we’ll ask.  We’ll ask them by reading some theory, and some strange and wonderful hybrid texts.  And we will write our own.  Available for both cw and literature credit and open to all.  Can also be used for senior seminar credit in the creative writing option.

This survey of major British writers from 1830 to 1900, such as Tennyson, the Brownings, Dickens, Mill, Arnold, and Shaw, focuses on the close reading of key texts, the historical and aesthetic factors driving Victorian society, and gives some attention to the painting of the period. We will also read works of two major intellectual figures of the era—Darwin, whose Origin of Species will have a 150-year anniversary next year, and Sigmund Freud, whose insights about sexuality and society in Civilization and Its Discontents, though published after this period, shed light on the preoccupations and outlook of the Victorians. Students will take reading quizzes and a final exam, and write one or two short papers (perhaps an analysis of poetry and the other a mini-research paper relating a writer to one of the various movements or controversies within the period). Regular attendance is crucial class participation required. Texts: Abrams. M. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Victorian Period. Vol. E. Charles Dickens. Hard Times. Dover (Thrift Edition). Sigmund Freud. Civilization and Its Discontents. Norton.

English 462 begins in the year 1939, the year that W.B. Yeats died and Hitler invaded Poland, launching a second calamitous world war. In Britain, 1939 marked the beginning of the end of widespread domestic unemployment, even as it signaled the destruction not only of its young men in battle, but also of its land and people at home during the Blitz. As the century progressed, Britain would also witness the disintegration of its once-dominant Empire, the subsequent influx of immigrants from its former colonies, and wild fluctuations in its economic position. All of these events radically restructured British society and called into question what exactly it means to be "British." The course will examine the literary responses to this series of transformations in recent British history, from poetry by Auden, Thomas, and Larkin, to plays by Beckett and Stoppard, and novels by Waugh, Rhys, Kureishi, and Inshiguro.

The Madness: 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 pursue the question--like Theseus following the thread. If you're ready to slay a minotaur with a thesis, then you're ready for the labyrinth of English 465.

The Method: 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. Throughout the course, students will read widely and will participate in ongoing debates by writers about the nature and aims of narrative. They also will write authoritatively about prominent literary theories, and they will generate creative responses to those theories, both in analytic reflections and in narrative innovations. In their critical responses, students will push beyond the basic skills of summary and comparison/contrast to conduct close readings of texts guided by systemic or synthetic thinking. Students will demonstrate synthetic thinking by making complex connections between theoretical essays and literary fictions and by extending a dialogue between those texts into projects of original criticism and imaginative writing. 465 assumes an advanced knowledge of compositional skills, including spelling, grammar, organization, citation, and thesis formation.

In this course, we will examine the modern and postmodern American novel. In the twentieth century, many writers have encountered a "broken world" where religious beliefs, social norms, and even material reality are held suspect. In examining this period--a period including the chaos of two world wars, the Great Depression, the threat of nuclear annihilation--we will explore some of the following questions: How have traditional notions of ontology, human nature, human relationships, time, and language itself been transformed in these novels? What does the author's perception of the world tell us about the culture in which we live? What general hypotheses can we make about the direction the twentieth-century American novel is taking--has the contemporary novel reached a point of exhaustion or a point of renewal? Students will take a midterm and final exam and write a short analytic paper and a longer research paper.

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 cover texts in Old English (500-1100) such as Beowulf, a variety of texts from the early Middle English period (1100-1350), and some later lyric poetry and romances, as well parts of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. For each period, we will examine 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. Although we will be studying some texts mainly in translation, 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 during the break should order Andrew Galloway, Medieval Literature and Culture (New York: Continuum, 2006). This is a basic (inexpensive 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.

For this course, students will complete a semester-long writing/editing internship in the communications division of a company, organization, or small business. Students will get the opportunity to explore occupations in the professional writing/editing field and gain valuable work experience. Internships are roughly 12-20 hours per week in areas such as copywriting, technical writing, corporate communications, advertising, and public relations. Students will work with the coordinator of the internship program to find an internship that matches their career interests. While completing their internships, students will meet with the coordinator on a bi-weekly basis to discuss their progress. Students will also compile a clip file of the work they have completed during their internship and write a short paper at the end of the course reflecting upon the experience. Please note that this class will not meet at the time and place specified in the Schedule of Classes. For information on how to enroll in this course, students should contact Dr. Kent Baxter at (818) 677-3425 or kent.baxter@csun.edu.

Welcome to Africa Remix!! Don your dashiki to attend the Los Angeles Pan-African Film Festival! See stunning movies for free on campus! Be seduced by a Senegalese film version of Carmen with a smouldering bisexual Carmen and foot-stomping music! Revel in a postmodern novel by the cantankerous Nobel laureate, J.M. Coetzee! Engage with work by other African writers who should have won Nobel prizes but didn't: Ousmane Sembene, Chinua Achebe. Experience the cutting feminist fiction of Ama Ata Aidoo, who was once appointed Ghana's Minister of Education--she resigned 18 months later! And enjoy the hilarious feminist film made by Sembene, one of the world's greatest filmmakers! Talk back to the trashy political TV sitcoms and soap operas of the "new" South Africa! Get to talk a lot in a class that has no lectures or exams! Better yet, create a blog chronicling your viewing and reading pleasures! And.... if you're really good... you even get to develop an independent research project!

Focusing on Latino Literature, we will read some fascinating stories, novels and theory. Moving beyond the lure of Magical Realism and the Boom, we will also consider Indigenous literature, feminist issues, and modern and postmodern narrative. Inasmuch as this is a seminar you will use all the skills you have developed as an English major: close reading, application of theoretical perspectives, direct classroom engagement of texts, and research and oral presentation.

English 495SEA
Senior Seminar: The Sea

The Sea. What is it, exactly, culturally and socially, this thing from which our species emerged, that envelops the world, that has been (and still is) the central avenue of commerce, that attracts humans to its edges as a magnet attracts iron filings? In order to explore these (and related) questions while trying to situate, historically, the sea’s relationship to globalization and modernity, we will read some writings from and about the age of Discovery, such as Columbus’ journals and Alejo Carpentier’s The Harp and the Shadow. We’ll also look at Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and radical revisions of these works by postcolonial writers, and we’ll discuss tales of the sea by Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, and several lesser-known authors, including pirates and slaves, as well as texts by more contemporary writers. Additionally, we will examine some anthropological and theoretical writings, along with work in other media—on the ocean, seaside tourism, shipboard labor, sea-related “natural” catastrophes—that will help us to understand the socio-political implications of the sea that for some reason seem to elude us, as we fantasize about vacationing on tropical isles or heading out to Zuma. While students will write about literature, they will also have the option of developing self-reflexive, theoretically informed ethnographic texts that engage with major themes of the course. (If feasible, we will try to take a field trip out to sea.)

This seminar studies critical theory and literature about nature and technology in so far they define our modern identity as creatures and fears about our future. It also develops eco-critical analytical skills. We will focus on the west and California, both as a place and source of poets and writers about place. In our study of California desert regionalist Mary Austin we will see how creative non-fiction develops both ecological and historical topics in an effort to develop our own collective writings about a local place—Malibu, its State Park, its natural and human history, its surfing culture, and its current development and restoration. This will also involve at least a one-day field trip to the area and a second potential trip to the off shore Channel Islands. We will also write an analytical paper of eco-criticism and take a terminology examination. Students will have the opportunity to submit paper proposals for presentation at a national panel on Humanities and Science. TEXTS Glotfelty and Fromm, eds., The Ecocriticism Reader. University of Georgia Press 0-8203-1781-0 Buckley and Young, eds., Geography of Home: California’s Poetry of Place Heyday Books 1-890771-19-8 Quinn, Daniel. Ishmael. Bantam Doubleday Dell 1992 0553375407 Coupland, Douglas. Shampoo Planet. Pocket 1992 0671755064 Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream.. Rey; Reissue edition 034540 Austin, Mary. Land of Little Rain. Penguin 0 14 02-49192

The Madness: Look at that mirror again. Hand-held or full-length? Reversing or “true?” Square? Round? Flat? Convex? How exactly does the size and shape of the frame determine the content of the reflection, the dimension of the image? And what does any of this have to do with fiction? Plenty, as it turns out. The difference between a hand-held and a full-length mirror, a sketch and a full-scale painting, or a close-up and a wide-angle shot reveals not only what we see but how we see. In the mirror ball of fiction, a full-scale realist novel may seem the best form for producing a “true” reflection of reality, but its wide frame still reveals cracks “in the floors of memory.” A minimalist or surrealist short story may seem best suited for a brief anecdote or a clever vignette, but its tiny frame can contain “eternity on the head of a pin.” If you’re ready to dance over the cracks in the floor, then you’re ready for the endless masquerade of fiction in English 608.

The Method: 608 offers advanced graduate-level instruction in writing fiction, including both the short story and the novel. In the first half of the course, students will focus closely on the tension between the divided forms of fiction by examining key contemporary writers who first danced on the head of a pin in a short story before waltzing across the horizon in a novel. In the second half of the course, students will produce their own short story or novel excerpt, keeping in mind the separate theories and techniques that guide those divided forms of fiction. Throughout the semester, students will read widely and will analyze published fiction and the fiction of other students in oral presentations and in written responses. 608 assumes a previous introduction to both conventional and experimental narrative forms, as well as prior workshop experience.

While this seminar is largely populated by Linguistics/TESL graduate students who will be engaged in looking at theories of syntax in depth, the course welcomes English MA students who have been bitten by the syntax bug in ENGL 604, or who are wondering what linguists have to say regarding the knowledge about the nature and structure of well formed phrases and clauses speakers develop and somehow use. Students will read and analyze both journal articles and text material and they will look at work at solving syntax problems and puzzles. Submitted work will include an annotated bibliography on a selected topic in syntax, and two in-depth summary and analysis pieces on writings (journal articles or book chapters) selected by students in consultation with me. The overall goal of the seminar focuses on having students come away with a rich and reasonably sophisticated understanding of current topics and concerns in syntax, of how linguists are talking about them, and of what relevance beyond linguistics they might have.

A century after the first publication of his writing, James Joyce remains one of the towering figures of twentieth-century European literature, as admired now as he was by his own contemporaries. T.S. Eliot wrote of Ulysses, "I hold this book to be the most important expression which the present age has found; it is a book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape." Virginia Woolf claimed that Joyce was "concerned at all costs to reveal the flickerings of that innermost flame which flashes its messages through the brain, and in order to preserve it he disregards with complete courage whatever seems to him adventitious. . . If we want life itself, here surely we have it." Ezra Pound said Joyce "looks without bewilderment on life." Certainly, Joyce has proved bewildering to generations of readers. This course aims to replace that bewilderment with something more like appreciation and awe, by taking CSUN graduate students carefully through much of Joyce's major work. We will read Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses—all of it, and you will be able to boast about successfully negotiating a literary rite of passage. Course requirements will include weekly response papers, an in-class presentation, and a seminar paper of 15-20pp.

Here’s a question for writers I’m fond of posing:  in an age saturated with narrative, what might “count” as a viable strategy for narrative writers some fifty years after Saul Bellow called for a fiction that could not be filmed?  How is it possible to make, as Pound would have us, story-writing “new?”  Or, let’s agree that newness doesn’t matter and isn’t possible anyway:  how then are we to reconcile a post-modern consciousness with what I’ve always liked to call the private, enduring instinct behind the narrative impulse?

These are big questions, and this class will not answer but only explore them in the context of hybridity as one possible response to the writerly and readerly challenges they both proceeds from and poses.  We’ll begin with the question of hybridity itself—what it is, where it comes from, why, how it moves through the world?  Does hybridity grow out of culture, identity, genre, or language itself?  Is it even something we plan or something that we are/do when we come from/dwell in marginalized spaces and are compelled to write in dominant spaces?  And what does it look like anyway?  Might it promise a “new” way of telling stories, or does it represent, instead, an end of “telling stories?”  Where do we see the pieces of it and how do its edges cohere?  And is it a radical, experimental expression of narrative that is at least one response to the exhaustion of old forms?  Or might it be, a refusal to embrace the old forms that comes, instead, from the emergence of multiple new perspectives and voices—up to and including, possibly, yours?

Those are just some of the questions we’ll ask.  We’ll ask them by reading some theory, and also, four strange and wonderful hybrid texts:  Rings of Saturn, by W.G. Sebald; The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, by Dubravka Ugresic; The Absent City, by Ricardo Piglia, and Operation Wandering Soul, by Richard Powers (for now).  And we will write our own.  Available for both cw and literature credit and open to all.

This seminar will focus upon the theory and practice of the study of American popular culture, taking as its premise that while the particular subjects of popular culture can be trivial, the study of popular culture as a subject is not, given the central place that entertainment has taken in contemporary American society. Taking in the history of Cultural Studies, we will survey Marxist, Structuralist, Feminist, Postmodern and Semiotic approaches to the analysis and study of popular culture and apply them to contemporary phenomena, seeking thereby an overview on what kind of a society ours is. Students will present a class presentation on a popular cultural topic of their choice and will also write a 15-20 page term essay. The texts are Simon During's The Cultural Studies Reader (3d edition) and Dominic Strinati's An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture (2d edition).

What are the politics of information? What does student-centered pedagogy have to do with race, class, and gender? Why are you being asked questions when you no longer have time for answers?

This seminar explores rhetoric as a discipline in the twentieth and twenty-first century as well as the relationship between rhetoric, epistemology, economics, and subjectivity.

The course is designed for students interested in teaching, research, and/or further graduate study. Readings draw from philosophy, sociology, literary theory, new media studies, and composition. Coursework includes presentations, weekly WebCT posts, and a final web project. Class meetings are discussion-oriented and open-ended. No tests or exams.

In this discussion-based class, we will be examining several works associated with postcolonial literature--a contested label commonly used to refer to works affected by the history of one culture colonizing another. We will ask not only what happens to the minds and psyche of those who are colonized, but also what happens to those who attempt to dominate another culture. We will examine two key European texts--Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Forster's A Passage to India--that have had a profound effect on the postcolonial imagination. We will also examine such texts as Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Naipaul's A Bend in the River, Cha's Dictee, and Roy's The God of Small Things as works that respond to the colonial experience. Our readings of these texts will be informed by the theories of such postcolonial critics as Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak.