English Department Course Descriptions

Spring 2008

 

 

ENG 207-001  BEG WKSP IMAG WRITING: FICTION       T 3:30-6:00                 Edwards

English 207 is an introductory undergraduate course designed to explore the writing of fiction, especially the short story.  Students will focus on the essential elements of fiction, including imagery, voice, character, setting, the use of language, and narrative form.  At times we will draw on the rich genres of poetry and drama to enhance our discussions of language, imagery, and dialogue.  Students will look at both traditional and experimental story forms from around the world, will explore these forms in their own writing, and will participate fully in a supportive workshop setting, giving and receiving thoughtful criticism.

 

ENG 207-002  BEG WKSP IMAG WRITING: FICTION       R 3:30-6:00                 Marksbury

 

ENG 207-003  BEG WKSP IMAG WRITING: POETRY      W 3:00-5:30                 Howell

 

ENG 207-004  BEG WKSP IMAG WRITING: FICTION       M 3:00-5:30                 Cardiff

 

ENG 207-005  BEG WKSP IMAG WRITING: FICTION       R 3:30-6:00                 Varnes

As Joyce Carol Oates puts it, "Inspiration and energy and even genius are rarely enough to make 'art': for prose fiction is also a craft, and craft must be learned, whether by accident or design." By design then, we’ll study craft this term, understanding that craft comes from practice and conversation with other writers. At its best, a workshop offers a sense of camaraderie via deadlines, an honest mirror, support for revision, and some shared knowledge of published works. To approach this ideal, we’ll read some classic and some contemporary pieces of short fiction and mine them for inspiration and cues. We’ll discuss craft in conjunction with these works as well as writing exercises, and of course we’ll discuss student writing in all stages of the process. Requirements: three stories, at least one having gone through extensive revision, participation, written feedback to other writers, at least six exercises, and two very short envy papers.

 

ENG/LIN 210-001   HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANG                       MW 4:00-5:15             O’Hara

This is an introductory course in the History of the English Language in which we will study the ways in which English has developed from its origins to modern times.

PURPOSE of the course:  To answer the following questions: Where does Modern English come from? How has English changed over the last 1200 years? What do those changes show us about the process of language change in general? What influence have class, race, gender, and politics had on the development of English? What are some of the more common myths about language and why are they wrong? What is the future of English as a world language?

LEARNING OBJECTIVE: The student will be able to analyze, compare, and contrast language data drawn from all periods of  English and to explain the processes by which Modern English evolved. Learning to do this kind of analysis is the most important part of the course.

METHOD: Four exams based on the assigned readings and selected videos; daily quizlets on the homework readings. No cumulative mid-term or final. 

TEXTS: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. David Crystal,

2d edition, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

                        Language Myths. (eds) Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill, Penguin, 1998.

                        The Story of English. Robert McCrum, 3d edition. Penguin Books, 2002.

 

NOTES: 1) Students in the College of Communications can satisfy their Language           

requirement (under Option B) by taking ENG/LIN 210 and ENG/LIN                     211 in any order.

   2) Attendance is mandatory from the first day of class for all students        

     including those on the waitlist.

 

ENG/LIN 210-401   HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANG                       MW 6:00-7:15             O’Hara

See description for ENG/LIN 210-001

 

ENG/LIN 210-402   HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANG                       TR 6:00-7:15               O’Hara

See description for ENG/LIN 210-001

 

ENG/LIN 211-001  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS I                   TR 3:30-4:45

 

ENG/LIN 211-002  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS I                   TR 5:00-6:45

 

ENG/LIN 211-003  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS I                   MWF 9:00-9:50           El-Guindy

 

ENG/LIN 211-004  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS I                   MWF 10:00-10:50       El-Guindy

 

ENG/LIN 211-005  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS I                   MWF 1:00-1:50           Barrett

This course is an introduction to the scientific study of human language, with an emphasis on the fundamental principles of linguistic theory, and applications of these principles in the investigation of grammatical structure, language change, language universals and typology, writing systems. The course will also focus on the application of linguistic study to real-world problems, e.g. language and technology. Credit will not be given to students who already have credit for ENG 414G. (Same as LIN 211.)

 

ENG/LIN 211-006  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS I                   TR 11:00-12:15          

 

ENG/LIN 211-007  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS I                   TR 2:00-3:15               O’Hara

PREREQUISITE: NONE

SCOPE of the course:  Linguistics is the scientific study of human language as a system. Everyone knows a language – but what does it mean to know a language? How are languages different from one another? How are they similar? This course introduces students to the major sub-fields of linguistics, focusing on the structure of human language (phonology, morphology, syntax), and concludes with a consideration of historical linguistics, including the historical development of the English language.

METHOD: Daily quizlets; quizzes on individual chapters; exams on related chapters; frequent in-class and periodic homework assignments to reinforce what has been learned in class. No cumulative mid-term or final.

TEXT: Contemporary Linguistics, William O’Grady, et al; 5th edition. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005.

 

ENG/LIN 211-008  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS I                   MWF 2:00-2:50           El-Guindy

 

ENG/LIN 211-401  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS I                   MW 5:30-6:45

 

ENG/LIN 212-001  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS II                  TR 9:30-10:45             Bosch

This is the second semester of a two-semester sequence introducing the study of Linguistics.  (However, LIN 211 is NOT currently a prerequisite for this course.)  Linguistics is the scientific study of human language as a system.  Everyone knows a language--but what does it mean to know a language?  How are languages different from one another?  How are they similar?  This course will introduce students to the social aspects of the study of linguistics, focusing on the issues and problems of interest within each of these fields; topics include semantics, first and second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, brain and language, psycholinguistics, and animal communication.  There will be frequent homework assignments and quizzes, and three exams.  Textbook: Contemporary Linguistics, 5th Edition, by O’Grady, Archibald, Aronoff, and Rees-Miller. 

 

ENG/LIN 212-002  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS II                  MWF 12:00-12:50       El-Guindy

See description for ENG/LIN 212-001

 

ENG/LIN 212-003  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS II                  TR 3:30-4:45               Lauersdorf

See description for ENG/LIN 212-001

 

ENG 230-001  INTRO TO LITERATURE                            MWF 1:00-1:50           Purdue

The Empire Writes Back: British Imperialism in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Literature

This course will read nineteenth-century British literature alongside postcolonial fiction, exploring alternate narratives about British imperialism.  We will consider what empire meant to the English during the nineteenth century, and will also study the ways in which twentieth-century writers from once colonized places have revised and responded to Victorian accounts.  Of particular interest to our discussions will be issues surrounding language, nationality, subjectivity, sexuality, gender, class, and hybridity. Texts will include Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Kipling’s Kim, Forster’s A Passage to India, Roy’s The God of Small Things, The History of Mary Prince and Kincaid’s A Small Place.

 

ENG 230-002  INTRO TO LITERATURE                            TR 9:30-10:45             Varnes

 

ENG 230-003  INTRO TO LITERATURE                            MWF 12:00-12:50       Purdue

The Empire Writes Back: British Imperialism in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Literature

This course will read nineteenth-century British literature alongside postcolonial fiction, exploring alternate narratives about British imperialism.  We will consider what empire meant to the English during the nineteenth century, and will also study the ways in which twentieth-century writers from once colonized places have revised and responded to Victorian accounts.  Of particular interest to our discussions will be issues surrounding language, nationality, subjectivity, sexuality, gender, class, and hybridity. Texts will include Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Kipling’s Kim, Forster’s A Passage to India, Roy’s The God of Small Things, The History of Mary Prince and Kincaid’s A Small Place.

 

ENG 230-004  INTRO TO LITERATURE                            TR 2:00-3:15               Prats, J.

 

ENG 230-005  INTRO TO LITERATURE                            MWF 2:00-2:50           Chaney

 

ENG 230-006  INTRO TO LITERATURE                            MWF 1:00-1:50           Carter

 

ENG 230-007  INTRO TO LITERATURE                            MWF 9:00-9:50           Phillips

Reading Literature

This course begins by asking questions about its title.  What does it mean to read?  How is reading a novel different from reading a poem, play, a newspaper, or the Internet?  And what do we mean by "literature"?  And beyond the question of meaning, how does literature work?  To address these questions, we will acquire an understanding of basic literary terminology and will read a number of modern and contemporary texts, including  Eliot's The Lifted Veil, Woolf's A Room of One's Own and To the Lighthouse, Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Friel's Translations, and Hare's Stuff Happens.  Assignments will likely include regular short writing assignments, three 5-7 page essays, and a final exam. 

 

ENG 230-008  INTRO TO LITERATURE                            MWF 10:00-10:50       Phillips

See description for ENG 230-007.

 

ENG 230-009  INTRO TO LITERATURE                            TR 11:00-12:15           Varnes

 

ENG 230-010  INTRO TO LITERATURE                            TR 8:00-9:15               Jennings

 

ENG 230-011  INTRO TO LITERATURE                            MWF 3:00-3:50           Chaney

 

ENG 230-012  INTRO TO LITERATURE                             MWF 8:00-8:50           Freeman

Literature of Place: Landscape, Community, and Identity

            In this course we will be exploring the way place influences identity.  Who you are is determined by where you come from and your relationship to that community.  We will be studying nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British works that emphasize the role of place—landscape, environment, community—as a central thematic concern.  Some of the major issues which will enter into our discussion include the drastic changes brought on by the industrial revolution and the subsequent rise in the middle-class and urbanization, the rise in commodity culture, and England’s imperial project at the expense of the passing agrarian economy and rural landscape which formed England’s national mythos.  We will begin with Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, poems which form iconic representations of simple, rural life. Next, we will read a mid-century Victorian novel which glorifies the passing agrarian way of life while it reflects some of the problems with an expanding industrial system.  Then, we will read several novels from the early twentieth-century which look at the effects of empire in the colony and on the isle.  We will try to understand what it means to be English and how that identity is shaped by either a rural or an urban heritage; we will examine what it means to be a colonizer and a colonized subject.  How do issues of urbanization, class, race, and empire challenge what it means to be English? We will look at some selected critical essays along with the following literary works: Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, Gaskell's North and South, Joyce's The Dead, Forster's Howards End, Bronte's Jane Eyre, and Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea.

 

ENG 230-401  INTRO TO LITERATURE                            TR 6:00-7:15        Schroot-Mitchum

 

ENG 231-001  LITERATURE AND GENRE                         TR 12:30-1:45       Tarrant-Hoskins

The Gothic

The 1760s witnessed the rise of a new kind of literary fashion characterized by its addiction to supernatural horrors (ghosts, bleeding nuns, dead babies, vampirism, etc) melodramatic plots, exotic settings, themes of alienation, and passion and despair. This course will explore the various manifestations of this trend from the 18th Century to the present day. We will start with the earliest examples of authors who helped to define the phenomenon, namely Ann Radcliffe and M.G. Lewis.  Then considering how Gothic literature developed both in England and America, we’ll try to understand why the Gothic has so captured the popular imagination ‘til this day. There will be an emphasis on the ways gothic tales encode cultural anxieties about gender, class, and power.

Likely Texts:
Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Matthew Lewis’ The Monk (1796)
Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847)
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897)

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818)

Several film versions of these texts will also be shown.

 

ENG 231-002  LITERATURE AND GENRE                         MWF 11:00-11:50       Dummitt

The Cold War and Beyond

The cold war was not merely a time of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, but also a period of intense American interiority, a time when numerous anxieties concerning individuality and both group and national identities emerged. 

This course intends to engage the landscape of the cold war by studying the ways in which literature reveals many of the period’s most pressing concerns about the individual and society. Key themes we will explore include anonymity and invisibility, doubling, domesticity, government oppression, censorship, sexuality, friendship, militarism, paranoia, and mass communication.

We will also consider how the era of the cold war remains, in many ways, part of our collective identities, with similar tropes of selfhood, community, and nation being deployed in our current political climate.

 

Other ideas we will cover:

The changing form and function of the novel and fiction; the history and trajectory of “American studies”; school culture; campus novels; identities: race, gender, sexuality, and class; subcultures, such as the beats; existentialism; the military industrial complex and military events, such as WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and US/Soviet interventions in Cuba, Central America, Afghanistan, and elsewhere; psychoanalysis; feminism; the old left and new left; modernism/postmodernism and modernity/postmodernity; queer culture; popular intellectual culture, such as the Paris Review, Partisan Review, New Left Review, and the New Yorker; normativity and normalization; rock music, drugs, and youth culture, Reaganomics, neoliberalism and neoconservatism; media monopoly; globalization. And this list is by no means even close to exhaustive.

 

Texts to be studied:

 

Age of McCarthyism by Ellen Schrecker 0312393199

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 0679732764

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov 0679723420

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller 0684833395

Ariel by Sylvia Plath (selections to be provided)

Howl by Allen Ginsberg (selections to be provided)

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon 0060931671

Slaughterhouse-Five  by Kurt Vonnegut 0385333846

White Noise by Don Delillo 0140274987

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson 0553380958

 

ENG 232-001  LITERATURE AND PLACE                          MWF 12:00-12:50       Freeman

Literature of Place: Landscape, Community, and Identity

            In this course we will be exploring the way place influences identity.  Who you are is determined by where you come from and your relationship to that community.  We will be studying nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British works that emphasize the role of place—landscape, environment, community—as a central thematic concern.  Some of the major issues which will enter into our discussion include the drastic changes brought on by the industrial revolution and the subsequent rise in the middle-class and urbanization, the rise in commodity culture, and England’s imperial project at the expense of the passing agrarian economy and rural landscape which formed England’s national mythos.  We will begin with Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, poems which form iconic representations of simple, rural life. Next, we will read a mid-century Victorian novel which glorifies the passing agrarian way of life while it reflects some of the problems with an expanding industrial system.  Then, we will read several novels from the early twentieth-century which look at the effects of empire in the colony and on the isle.  We will try to understand what it means to be English and how that identity is shaped by either a rural or an urban heritage; we will examine what it means to be a colonizer and a colonized subject.  How do issues of urbanization, class, race, and empire challenge what it means to be English? We will look at some selected critical essays along with the following literary works: Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, Gaskell's North and South, Joyce's The Dead, Forster's Howards End, Bronte's Jane Eyre, and Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea.

 

ENG 233-001  LITERATURE AND IDENTITIES                  MWF 1:00-1:50           Engholm, G.

 

ENG 234-001  INTRO TO WOMEN’S LIT                            MWF 11:00-11:50       Oaks

 

ENG 234-002  INTRO TO WOMEN’S LIT                           MWF  12:00-12:50      Oaks

 

ENG 234-401  INTRO TO WOMEN’S LIT                           MW  6:00-7:15            Stevenson

 

ENG 262-001  WEST LIT 1660 TO PRESENT                    MWF 10:00-10:50       Campbell, D.

English 262 surveys Western World literature from the Enlightenment to the present, focusing upon works of great literary merit which represent main elements in the evolving western culture.  In this course we will engage the ideas and examine the evolving world view of these three hundred years, relating our discussions to our own ideas and values.  This course satisfies the new Graduation Writing Requirement, and therefore involves drafting, instructor review and peer review.  It also satisfies some University Studies program requirements. There will be three papers, totaling 15 pages, minimum. 

 

ENG 262-002  WEST LIT 1660 TO PRESENT                    MWF 11:00-11:50       Campbell, D.

            See description for ENG 262-001.

 

ENG 262-201  WEST LIT 1660 TO PRESENT        Distance Learning (257-3377)  Fulbrook

 

ENG/AAS 264-001  MAJOR BLACK WRITERS                  TR 8:00-9:15               Fairfield

 

ENG/AAS 264-002  MAJOR BLACK WRITERS                  MWF 9:00-9:50           Fairfield

 

ENG/AAS 264-003  MAJOR BLACK WRITERS                  MWF 12:00-12:50       Fairfield

 

ENG/AAS 264-004  MAJOR BLACK WRITERS                  MWF 2:00-2:50           LaCroix

This course is guided by African American writers’ answers to two questions. First, do we work to live, or live to work? Second, what is the relationship between the present and the past? Answers to these questions are the raw materials of identities—sources of power, topics for argument, and reasons to live. One’s relationship to work and to the past both contribute to one’s social and individual identity. Like everyone else, African American writers have had to address these questions, but most often without the privileges that other Americans often take for granted. In examining a selection of major black authors, this course also will explore central themes of the African American literary tradition, such as migration, history, memory, and double consciousness. Students will also learn techniques of literary, textual, and historical analysis. And, as should not surprise anyone interested in the GWR requirement, students will do the hard work of writing, revising, and writing again. Authors include: Harriet Jacobs, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, Colson Whitehead, and Edward P. Jones.

 

ENG/AAS 264-005  MAJOR BLACK WRITERS                  TR 12:30-1:45             Schoenfeld

According to the infamous “Moynihan Report,” published in 1965 by the U. S. Department of Labor, the struggle of blacks in America to achieve equality is significantly hampered by irregularities (not to say deviance) in the black family structure.  The report attributes these irregularities to the legacy of slavery.  In this course, we will examine how several major black authors—including, but not limited to Harriet Jacobs, Frances Harper, Charles Chesnutt, Toni Morrison, and Octavia Butler—develop and express their own understandings of the legacy of slavery on the black family.  These authors develop themes including: separation, reuniting, the challenges of limited employment opportunities to the integrity of the family, the taboo of race mixing and its violation, the strengths and challenges of matrifocal families, etc.  Note: This course satisfies the second-tier writing requirement; accordingly, all students will draft, review, and revise three essays over the course of the semester.  Class participation, discussion questions, and exams will also factor into your grades.

 

ENG/AAS 264-006  MAJOR BLACK WRITERS                  MWF 10:00-10:50       LaCroix

See description for ENG/AAS 264-004

 

ENG/AAS 264-401  MAJOR BLACK WRITERS                  TR 7:30-8:45               Fairfield

 

ENG 270-001  THE OLD TESTAMENT AS LIT                   MWF 9:00-9:50           Battista

This semester, we will read the Old Testament as literature rather than as a sacred text.  Or, more specifically, we will approach the Old Testament by reading sections of it through the lens of various literary critical hermeneutical methods, a method we can distinguish from those that regard the Old Testament as a wellspring of personal religious or spiritual edification (i.e. “God’s Word”).  One goal of this course is to understand the politics and consequences of its title; should we refer to the text we’re reading as the Bible, Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, Jewish Scriptures, Torah, or Tanakh?  A second goal of this course is to read the Old Testament as a separate entity, distinct from the New Testament and its various appropriates and reinterpretations of the Old Testament (we’ll do this insofar as this task is possible).  To accomplish these goals, we’ll consider the process of canonization, weigh the challenges of reading texts that have been redacted and translated, understand the conventions of Old Testament literary genres, and explore a variety of literary critical interpretations of Old Testament texts.

 

The required texts are The Jewish Study Bible, Tanakh Translation.  Berlin, Adele and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds. (ISBN: 0195297546), Brettler, Marc, How to Read the Bible. (ISBN: 082760775X), and Freud, Sigmund.  Moses and Monotheism. (ISBN: 0394700147)

 

 

ENG 281-001  INTRODUCTION TO FILM                          TR 11:00-12:15           Marksbury

 

ENG 281-002  INTRODUCTION TO FILM                          TR 12:00-1:45             Hendricks

 

ENG 281-003  INTRODUCTION TO FILM                          MWF 10:00-10:50       Sengupta

 

ENG 281-004  INTRODUCTION TO FILM                          MWF 9:00-9:50           Reese, C.

 

ENG 281-005  INTRODUCTION TO FILM                          MWF 11:00-11:50       Sengupta

 

ENG 281-401  INTRODUCTION TO FILM                          TR 6:00-7:15               Hendricks

 

ENG/LIN 310-001  AMERICAN ENGLISH                           TR 12:30-1:45             Bosch

This class will focus on spoken American English in all its variety.  How does your speech differ from mine?  How is it similar?  Can language change in the space of a generation? What's the difference between "good" English and "bad" English?  Can we (or do we) speak more than one dialect?  What do northerners say if they don't say "y'all"? This class covers various sociolinguistic topics based on language use in America, including differences based on geographic region, age, socio-economic status, ethnicity, and so on. You will gain practice writing, speaking, arguing, presenting a position, discussing it, testing a hypothesis, and following an idea through to its conclusion.  There will be weekly readings, 4 homework assignments, a final research paper, and a final oral report in class. 

 

ENG 330-001  TEXT & CONTEXT: FILMING HENRY JAMES   MW 3:00-4:15   Blum

 

ENG 330-002  TEXT & CONTEXT: MALORY LE MORTE D’ARTHUR  TR 12:30-1:45  Giancarlo

         In this course we will read a series of Arthurian narratives spanning from some of the earliest chronicle accounts of King Arthur to the Victorian era. Readings will include excerpts from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, a 12th century quasi-historical chronicle; Chrétien de Troyes’ Arthurian Romances, the 12th century French foundation for romantic Arthurian literature; and the 14th century alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The centerpiece of the course will be Sir Thomas Malory’s 15th century Works (Le Morte D’Arthur). We will conclude with the 19th century Arthurian romances of Alfred Tennyson and with Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.  In the classroom, discussion and analysis will focus on 1) the differing approaches to themes important to the Arthurian tradition (e.g., romantic love; gender roles and expectations; society and social unity; the forces of history; the demands of justice, religion, and war); and 2) the social significance of the works themselves as reflections of contemporary culture. Work will include regular quizzes, two short essays and one longer essay.

 

ENG 330-003 TEXT & CONTEXT:SEX & GEND RENAISS LIT  MWF 10:00-10:50 MacDonald

This section of English 330 will invite students to read some of English literature’s most powerful—and sometimes funniest--writing about love in order to find out what it can tell us about masculinity, about femininity, and about human sexuality in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Along with a mix of poems and plays by such authors as Marlowe, Sidney,  Shakespeare, Jonson, and Donne, students will also read some of the material that shaped and reflected ideas about men, women, and the erotic in the period: Biblical passages, medical and scientific treatises, classical literature (in translation), legal and family history, moralists’ warnings, gossip and jokes. Quizzes, two exams, and a final paper.

 

ENG 330-004  TEXT & CONTEXT: WORLD WAR I                       MWF 1:00-1:50           Kalliney

ENG 330-005  TEXT & CONTEXT: WORLD WAR I                       MWF 1:00-1:50           James

Note: ENG 330-004 & 005 will meet together.  The description applies to both sections.

At the distance of nearly a century, it is now difficult to appreciate the lasting impact of the Great War, as it was long known, on European and American culture.  It was the first truly mechanized war, involving the widespread use of chemical weapons, machine guns, long-range artillery, and airpower; it was also the first war of mass conscription.  Yet its lasting impact cannot be measured solely in terms of new technologies and lists of casualties: the war's sheer brutality and unanticipated duration effectively blurred the line between combatant and civilian, adversary and ally.  Everyone and everything, it seemed, was drafted into the conflict--including writers, artists, and filmmakers.  Surveying a range of novels, poems, films, paintings, sculptures, histories, and primary documents from the 1910s and 20s, this course will consider World War I in and as context.  Course assignments will include unannounced quizzes, essays, examinations, and group projects.

 

ENG 331-001  SURVEY OF BRITISH LIT I                          MWF 11:00-11:50       Kelemen

 

ENG 332-001  SURVEY OF BRITISH LIT II                         MWF 9:00-9:50           Purdue

This course is partly a traditional survey, moving chronologically through history from the Restoration to Modernism in order to trace changes and continuities among canonical British literary texts. Yet, it also covers some non-canonical texts, such as The History of Mary Prince, working class literature, and New Woman texts, that revise traditional literary history. In addition to reading this literature, we will also study some historical documents from the periods we look at in order to trace the interconnections among literary works and their cultural contexts. Texts may include Richardson’s Pamela, Lewis’ The Monk, Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Eliot’s Middlemarch and Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.

 

ENG 333-001  STUDIES IN BRIT AUTHOR: CHAUCER   MWF 12:00-12:50       Kelemen

 

ENG 334-001  SURVEY OF AMERICAN LIT I                     TR  2:00-3:15              Clymer

This course will be an immersion in the literature and cultural history of the United States from the late eighteenth century through the Civil War.  Our primary focus will be on the complex and often strange ways in which issues of race, economics, identity, gender, and nationhood were imagined and intertwined during these decades.  In addition to looking closely at changing literary form and structure, we will pay attention to literature’s entanglement with pressing historical issues.  Students should expect to come away from this class with a deep knowledge of both famous and often-undervalued American writers, as well as a firm grounding in the cultural history within which these men and women produced their work. 

The primary text will be the Norton Anthology of American Literature, volume 1, supplemented by novels such as Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple; Lydia Maria Child, Hobomok; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; and William Wells Brown, Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter.

Grades will likely be based on two essays, a mid-term, and bi-weekly response papers.

 

ENG 335-001  SURVEY OF AMERICAN LIT II                    MWF 10:00-10:50       James

This course offers a survey of American literature from Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to the present.  In order to bring this vast literary territory into focus, we will focus on a few of the major preoccupations of American writers, namely: what makes American literature distinctive and valuable?  Should it reflect or influence the social world?  Whose stories (past and present) count as American? After reading Twain, we will consider various apparitions of “the modern” and “modernism,” as they appear in representative American texts by James, Stein, Wharton, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway.  We will pay special attention to the ways in which modernism is gendered (as monstrous women, as wounded men) and the ways in which it depends upon and confounds racial categories: is it “mongrel”?  or does the “modern” encounter give rise to both “blackness” and “whiteness”? With Faulkner as our turning point, we will turn from the modern period to various post-war novels (by Morrison, O’Brien, and Lee) that explore the problems of narrating America’s secrets, past and present.  Can literature enable us to mourn our collective mistakes and losses?  Can it challenge us to re-imagine our national past and future?     

 

ENG 336-001  STUDIES IN AMER AUTHORS: TWICE-TOLD TALES  TR 9:30-10:45  Rust

This course examines books that rewrite novels and the novels they rewrite. We begin with Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man; move to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind and Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone; and end with Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, and Ian McEwan’s Saturday.  Occasionally, we will also view a film based on one of these texts.  We will study the novels in pairs, the original and the remake, treating each as both independent entity and critical commentary. How does the appropriation of a prior cultural moment construct a particular subsequent one? In what spirit does the later text proceed: homage, revision, condemnation, elaboration? How does it suggest we understand its predecessor? What aspects of the original does it highlight, and what does it obscure? These are a few of the questions we will ask in the service of becoming self-conscious, informed and articulate readers and viewers.

 

ENG 336-002  STUDIES IN AMER AUTHORS: APPALACHIAN LIT      TR 12:30-1:45  Reece

 

ENG 340-001  SHAKESPEARE                                            MWF 12:00-12:50       MacDonald

English 340 is designed as a survey of Shakespeare’s dramatic career, including plays from all the genres in which he worked—comedy, history, tragedy, and romance—and possibly some of his nondramatic poetry, too. Students will concentrate on learning to observe differences between plays within the same generic classification, as well as on learning to define the differences and possible points of connection between genres. Although Shakespeare was only one member of a brilliant generation of playwrights and poets, he is the one whose reputation and accomplishments have come to stand for an entire era of literary history. While students will engage with the details of our individual texts, an overarching goal of the course will be to come to grips with the power of Shakespeare’s reputation, both in his time and our own. Short papers, midterm, final exam.

 

ENG 382-001  HISTORY OF FILM II                                                TR 9:30-10:45             Marksbury

 

ENG 395-001  INDEPENDENT WORK                                                                    Clayton

 

ENG 401-001 SPECIAL TOPICS IN WRITING: LIFE WRITING   MWF 10:00-10:50    Thoune

This course will introduce students to the field of autobiographical and biographical literature known as life writing. We will critically approach classic and contemporary memoirs, confessions, letters, diaries, and visual portraits through the lenses of self, identity, secrets, truth, inheritance, and ethics.

 

ENG 407-001 INTERM WKSP IMAG WRITING: POETRY                        M  3:00-5:30    Howell

 

ENG 407-002  INTERM WKSP IMAG WRITING: FICTION                        T  3:30-6:00    Norman

 

ENG 480G-001 STDS IN FILM:VIETNAM & OTHER RECENT WARS  TR 12:30-1:45 Prats, A.

It’s not only (as it has been called) “America’s longest war” or “the war that never ends,” or an “American tragedy”; it’s also the war that has haunted all subsequent American wars and rumors of war, including the present one in Iraq. It is, moreover, the war that has come to undermine the American heroic mythology drawn from previous wars, especially those mythologies originating in the conquest of the American frontier and World War II. This course will explore film representations, both fictional and documentary, of the history, culture, and combat of the American part of the Vietnam War (ca. 1964-1975). In addition, we will study American and foreign movies (both documentary and fictional) of other wars in order both to assess the exceptional nature of America’s Vietnam War as well as the possible ways in which it has become the model and measure not only of subsequent wars but of cultural responses to them. This is not a course for “fans” or “buffs”—nor for Rambophiles or trivia hounds. This is not “your typical guy course” (if I may adapt the language of undergraduates), by which you’re to understand that it doesn’t cater to male fantasies of violence and heroism. Nor is this a course that encourages discussion of the political and military aspects of the War. The course hopes to attract serious and committed upper-division majors in the humanities as well as graduate students from departments other than English. Note: Students should not consider taking this course if they are uncertain of their abilities to write clear and coherent prose well above the sophomore level. Requirements: attendance, participation, journals, 15-page research paper on a topic approved by the instructor. Please note: Most of the viewing will be done outside of class, so it is expected that you will make time to screen these movies in detail before we discuss them in class.

 

ENG 481G-001 STUDIES IN BRIT LIT: MODERN IRISH LIT     TR 11:00-12:15              Allison

A course on 20th century Irish Literature and Culture from the Irish Literary Revival (W.B.Yeats, Lady Gregory, John Synge, James Joyce) to the literature of the present time, including the work of Edna O’Brien (The Country Girls), Brian Friel (Translations), and Claire Keegan’s striking collection of stories Walk the Blue Fields (2007). We’ll also read a selection of contemporary poetry, including that of Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, and Paul Muldoon. We shall study several classic films – including one celebrated documentary film – as well as the work of a number of key Irish painters (such as Jack Yeats and Sean Keating). Our aim will be to explore the concepts of nation, gender, and imagined community in relation to the cultural life of the nation, broadly defined. Themes to be explored will include Anglo-Irish and Hiberno-American relations; the place of the rural and the idealization of the west; Celticism and the survival of Gaelic culture; dialect and literary language; the growth and expansion of cities; gender and social hierarchies; communities; space, place, ‘rootedness’ and the postcolonial.

 

Required texts to include:

 

W.B.Yeats, Poems and Plays

Lady Gregory, Cuchulain of Muirthemne

J.M. Synge, The Playboy of the Western World, and The Aran Islands

James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Poems by W. B. Yeats, Susan Mitchell, Patrick Kavanagh, Louis MacNeice, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, Paul Muldoon, Sinead Morrisey

Films to include Man of Aran (Flaherty, 1934), The Quiet Man, Michael Collins

 

ENG 481G-002 STUDIES BRIT LIT:INTRO OLD ENG LANG/LIT  TR 9:30-10:45  Giancarlo

         This course will provide a linguistic and literary introduction to the Anglo-Saxon language, also known as Old English, which is the predecessor of English that flourished in Britain from c. 450-1100 AD. Readings and exercises will include a comprehensive grammatical introduction to Anglo-Saxon; extensive prose readings from ecclesial and chronicle texts; an introduction to Anglo-Saxon poetry; and readings in Anglo-Saxon culture and art. We will read the epic poem Beowulf in translation and have a look at some passages in the original language. We will also arrange a screening of the upcoming movie Beowulf (Paramount, November 2007). Graded work will include regular quizzes, midterm and final exams, and at least one short essay.

 

ENG 482G-001 STDS AMERICAN LIT: 19TH C AMERICAN NOVEL  TR 11:00-12:15  Clymer

In this class, we will study several of the most important American novels of the 19th century.  In addition to learning about changing literary form and structure, we will pay close attention to literature’s entanglement with pressing historical issues over the course of the century. 

Readings will likely include Lydia Maria Child, Hobomok; Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance; Maria Cummins, The Lamplighter; Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; William Wells Brown, Clotel; or, the President’s Daughter; Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson; Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady; Kate Chopin, The Awakening; Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition

Grades will likely be based on two essays, a mid-term, and a final exam.

 

ENG 482G-002 STDS AMERICAN LIT: CONTEMPORARY FICTION   TR 2:00-3:15   Trask

An examination of American fiction since around 1980 as well as the diverse categories by which its critics and readers have sought to identify it: minimalism, hyperrealism, flash-fiction, postmodernism, cyberpunk, the magical real. The class will begin by pairing the work of two influential and seemingly opposed authors of short fiction—Raymond Carver and Donald Barthelme—in order to generate the key terms and problems for approaching novels and short stories by the following writers:

 

1.      William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

2.      Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (1985) 

3.      Don Delillo, White Noise (1985)

4.      Octavia Butler, Lilith’s Brood (1987)

5.      Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine (1988)

6.      Art Spiegelman, Maus (1992) 

7.      Chang-Rae Lee, Native Speaker (1995)

8.      Richard Powers, Gain (1998)

9.      Amy Hempel, Tumble Home (1998)

10.  Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist (1999)

11.  Jumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies (2000)

12.  Alison Bechdel, Fun Home (2006)

 

Requirements:

Medium to heavy required reading—roughly a novel per week

30% 3-4 brief position / response papers (1-2 pgs) to generate class discussion

30% a take-home mid-term

40% either a take-home final (comprehensive) OR a term paper (approx. 12 pages) on a topic of the student’s own devising

 

ENG 485G-001 STDS LIT&GENDR: WRITING BLACK FEMINISM  MWF 11:00-11:50 LaCroix

            This course will explore black women’s narratives about work and labor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially the ways in which they and their characters negotiate the relationship between work and self. How can one deal with the need to work in order to live, and the modern idea that work defines the self? How are the conditions of work affected by power and privilege? In what ways has the range of work open to black women in particular shaped their selves, their lives, and their writing? The course will develop the black feminist premise that the economic and political status of black women in the United States can create a viewpoint on society and history that differs from that available to other groups. Students will develop the analytic know-how for interpreting the intersection of politics, literature, and public spheres in American literatures, while learning about African American literary traditions and public responses to them. Authors include: Harriet Jacobs, Alice Childress, Paule Marshall, Anne Moody, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, Gayl Jones, and Patricia Hill Collins.

 

ENG 507-001 ADVANCED WKSHP IMAG WRITING: FICTION     W 3:00-5:30     Norman

 

ENG 507-002 ADVANCED WKSHP IMAG WRITING: POETRY    W 3:00-5:30     Vance

            Imaginative Writing 507-002 is an advanced course in the craft of writing poems, for students who have demonstrated commitment to this work and to the reading of contemporary poets.  We will form an audience for each other’s poetry, and will read widely in an anthology and several collections of poems.  Particularly, we will focus upon two volumes of poems that recreate historical characters and will explore for ourselves the possibilities of this genre.

 

Books: A journal-book

A.      Poulin (ed.), Contemporary American Poetry, 8th edition (Houghton Mifflin)

Frank X. Walker, Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York (University Press of Kentucky)

Ruth Whitman, Tamsen Donner: A Women’s Journey (Alice James Books)

 

ENG 507-003 ADV WKSHP IMAG WRITING: SCREENWRITING T 3:30-6:00     Marksbury

 

ENG 509-201 COMPOSITION FOR TEACHERS              

 

ENG/LIN/ANT 516-001 GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS           TR 2:00-3:15               Hippisley

This course deals with the application of linguistic theory to the morphological, syntactic, and semantic analysis of natural languages.  We will discuss a variety of typological differences among languages, and we will develop a framework for describing these differences; in addition, we will investigate language universals of diverse kinds, and we will evaluate various recent attempts at explaining the existence of these universals.  Throughout, there will be a heavy emphasis on analyzing linguistic data from languages other than English. 

 

Topics covered will include all or part of:

 

·                     Morphological typology

·                     Constituents and syntactic categories

·                     Semantic roles and grammatical relations

·                     Lexical entries and well-formed clauses

·                     Noun phrases

·                     Case and agreement

·                     Tense and aspect

·                     Mood and modality

·                     Sentence types

·                     Subordinate clauses

·                     Inflection vs word formation

·                     Word-formation rules and valence

·                     Allomorphy

·                     Nonlinear morphology

·                     Clitics

·                     Special topic: basic colour terms

    

The textbook will be Paul Kroeger’s Analyzing Grammar (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

(Prerequisite:  ENG/LIN 211 or equivalent.)

 

ENG 519-001 INTRO TO OLD ENGLISH                           TR 9:30-10:45             Giancarlo

 

ENG/LIN 617-001 STDS IN LINGUISTICS: TESL PRACTICUM                          Clayton

 

ENG 642-001 STUDIES IN MODERN BRITISH LIT                      TR 2:00-3:15               Allison

A course on modernist poetry and the imagination of disaster and decline, including work by W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, H.D. (Trilogy), W.H. Auden and Louis MacNeice (Autumn Journal). Covering a span of four decades, from early through High Modernism and its aftermath, we’ll examine how a number of modernist poets from both sides of the Atlantic articulated variously a sense of impending disaster in the twentieth century, and how they responded artistically to the experience of civil conflict and war. Readings are likely to include Yeats’s apocalyptic poems and his “Meditations in Time of Civil War;” Eliot’s The Waste Land and Four Quartets; H.D.’ s Trilogy; a good deal of  Pound’s The Cantos; and MacNeice’s long poem of 1939, Autumn Journal. Major themes to include nation theory, imagined communities; uses of history and the national imaginary; war and trauma; occultism, ghosts, and the search for consolation. The authorized biographer of Yeats, Roy Foster (Carroll Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford), will lead the seminar in mid-March, and also lecture. Requirements include oral reports, one shorter and one final research paper.

 

ENG 653-001 STDS AMER LIT SINCE 1900: CIVIL RIGHTS   M 3:00-5:30         LaCroix

      This proseminar offers a historically-focused exploration of political and literary discourses of the Civil Rights Era, juxtaposing the writing of Movement activists, liberals, conservatives, and segregationists with canonical texts of the period. Reading will include selected interdisciplinary secondary articles (literary, historical, cultural studies). Our primary focus will be how discourses of freedom, rights, grievance, and citizenship informed imaginative literature of the time. Requirements: one longer paper, one shorter project, discussion leadership. First class meeting on 1/14/2008 will include readings from the Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader. Enrolled students will receive that assignment in advance, and should come prepared to discuss.

 

Texts:

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963)

John Berryman, The Dream Songs (1969)

Gwendolyn Brooks, Selected Poems (1963)

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me (1961)

Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun (1959)

Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird (1961)

Lillian Smith, Killers of the Dream (1949)

John Updike, Rabbit Redux (1971)

Alice Walker, Meridian (1976)

Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)                        

Claiborne Carson et al, eds. Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader (1991)

 

ENG 660-001 MODERN CRITICAL THEORY                    TR 11:00-12:15           Roorda

Ecocriticism?  Ugly term—clipped, sloganish; supercilious shorthand, as if “feminist criticism” were collapsed and nicknamed “femicrit.”  Yet it’s stuck, like it or not, as abbreviation for “ecological criticism”: criticism that takes “ecology” (whatever that means) as primary.  What is ecocriticism?  Where does it come from?  Where is it headed?  What’s in it for you?  We’ll consider what (if anything) English might be, and what roles we might play in it, during the present Ecology Century (“as the Earth churns”).

            A well-known ecocritic, Scott Slovic, tabbed it well in holding that, basically, ecocriticism moves two ways: it takes up works (literary and otherwise) that deal expressly with nature and environment; or it takes up any work (or genre, trend, form, artifact, etc.) from a perspective concerned with nature, environment and such—the “environmentality” of the text, in Lawrence Buell’s term.  So ecocritics have wide latitude, obviously, and no common set of methods, more a fuzzy set of allegiances and a mostly-shared sense of urgency.  The allegiances—to nature, place, animals, weather, organic growth, social change—are such as to make ecocriticism seem old, even primordial.  The urgency is more recent and growing, so as to make the approach seem très au courant.

            Such latitude and methodological license call for open-ended treatment—well suited for a seminar.  True to the type, this seminar will be plotted and conducted largely its participants, who will help determine what we read and what concerns we take up, and who will decide what objects upon which to ply critical acumen.  Practically speaking, this means that grad students from any sector of English studies, of whatever interests and aspirations, are welcome and urged to enroll.

 

ENG 691-001 READINGS IN RHET: CONSULTING PRACTICES                       Eldred

 

ENG 751-001 SEMINAR IN AMERICAN LIT: 1800-1860    TR 12:30-1:45             Rust

Between 1768, when Laurence Sterne named an unfinished book A Sentimental Journey, and 2007, when no one likes to be called “sentimental,” something seems to have happened to the word.  In fact, sentimentalism, a form of writing in which readers derive pleasure from the pain they feel imagining other people suffer, has always inspired intense antagonism and equally intense allegiance.  Focusing on novels from between the American

Revolution and the Civil War, as well as the cultural criticism these novels have inspired, this class will attempt to discern common elements among the wide variety of American novels called sentimental, and to reconcile these texts’ appeal with their potentially exploitative aspect.  In asking what makes a written work sentimental, we will examine the term's implication in gendered, racialized and class-based strategies of self-definition and oppression, as we explore intersections of sentimental discourse with nationalist ideology, abolitionist rhetoric, industrialization and colonialism.  After a brief review of stark early critical appraisals from James Baldwin, Leslie Fiedler, Ann Douglas and Jane Tompkins, our critical readings will range from Lori Merish, who sees sentimentalism as a method of “reinventing political hierarchy as psychological norms,” to Marianne Noble, who thinks this literature “enabled women to wield power through complicitous alignment with hegemonic ideologies.”

 

ENG 753-401 SEM AMER LIT SINCE 1900:AUGUST WILSON    R 6:00-8:30     Nadel

The course will examine the complete 10-play cycle of the late playwright, August Wilson, undoubtedly one of the leading American authors of the 20th Century, Wilson, in a span of twenty years, wrote a cycle of plays examining African-American experience in each decade of the 20th Century. These plays, unique in their scope and uniformly high quality, have won numerous awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes. In addition to all ten plays, we will look at the Wilson criticism in the context of the major influences on him: blues, art, African-American history, ritual, and religion. The course will culminate with a two-day August Wilson Conference, to take place in April, which will bring all of the important Wilson scholars to Lexington and result in an edited collection of essays on the later five Wilson plays. The students in the seminar will have an opportunity to present at the conference, and all of their seminar papers will be considered for inclusion in the volume. Students will be expected to write two short (3-page) papers, one short book review, and a seminar paper the length of a substantial publication. They will also be involved in reviewing the conference proposals and in contributing to the conference’s intellectual agenda.

 

ENG 771-001 SEMINAR SPEC TOPICS:FANTASTIC METAMORPH  W 3:00-5:30  Griffin

In Fantastic Metamophoses, Other Worlds: Ways of Telling the Self, Marina Warner suggests that "tales of metamorphosis often arose in spaces (temporal, geographical, and mental) that were crossroads, cross-cultural zones, points of interchange on the intricate connective tissue of communications between cultures." This seminar will investigate the ways that metamorphosis provided Anglo-American cultures with a rich vocabulary of tropes, tales, and topoi with which to think through ideas about change and identity in the second half of the nineteenth century, a period of imperialism, colonialism, immigration, nativism, and Reconstruction. We will study how scientific attempts to define--and cultural fears about the dissolution of--gender, racial, and sexual categories are played out in narratives of physical transformation. Our focus will be on fiction, but we will also work with the visual arts (especially painting and photography) from the period.

 

Possible readings include:

Carroll, Lewis, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass  (Norton Critical)

Chesnutt, Charles W., Conjure Woman and Other Stories in Selected Writings (Houghton Mifflin)

Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger (Routledge 2004)

Kingsley, Charles, The Water-Babies (Penguin/Puffin).

Ovid, Metamorphoses (Penguin)

Ritvo, Harriet, The Platypus and the Mermaid (Harvard UP 1998)

Spofford, Harriet, The Amber Gods & Other Stories

Stevenson, Robert Louis, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Norton Critical 2003)

Stoker, Bram, Dracula (Norton Critical 1997)

Warner, Marina, Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds: Ways of Telling the Self (Oxford UP 2002)

Wells, H.G., Island of Doctor Moreau

 

ENG 771-401 SEM SPEC TOPICS:BRIT CRIT THEORY & CULT STDS  M 7:00-9:30 Kalliney

In this introduction to critical theory, we will study the concept of "culture" in the British tradition from the late-eighteenth century to the present.  Culture is perhaps the most important, contested, yet least understood word in literary studies, and for that reason we will use it as the basis of our investigation into aesthetics, literary theory, and cultural studies.  The questions we will ask in this class range from the basic to the esoteric: when did "culture" become an important word to describe artistic and literary activities?  What exactly do we mean when we say "culture"?  Who defines the parameters of culture and on what authority?  Is culture something we share or something over which we fight?  We will situate the rapidly evolving use and meaning of the idea of culture in the context of massive historical and social change over the past two centuries: the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, the rise and fall of the British Empire, mass literacy, urbanization, democracy, the trend towards technical and professional specialization in British society (especially in the culture industry), World Wars, and postcolonial immigration, to name only the most important.  By thinking about the definition and use of culture, this course will introduce students to the key terms and practices of historical and contemporary literary criticism.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Linguistics Courses

 

ENG/LIN 210-001   HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANG                       MW 4:00-5:15             O’Hara

This is an introductory course in the History of the English Language in which we will study the ways in which English has developed from its origins to modern times.

PURPOSE of the course:  To answer the following questions: Where does Modern English come from? How has English changed over the last 1200 years? What do those changes show us about the process of language change in general? What influence have class, race, gender, and politics had on the development of English? What are some of the more common myths about language and why are they wrong? What is the future of English as a world language?

LEARNING OBJECTIVE: The student will be able to analyze, compare, and contrast language data drawn from all periods of  English and to explain the processes by which Modern English evolved. Learning to do this kind of analysis is the most important part of the course.

METHOD: Four exams based on the assigned readings and selected videos; daily quizlets on the homework readings. No cumulative mid-term or final. 

TEXTS: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. David Crystal,

2d edition, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

                        Language Myths. (eds) Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill, Penguin, 1998.

                        The Story of English. Robert McCrum, 3d edition. Penguin Books, 2002.

 

NOTES: 1) Students in the College of Communications can satisfy their Language           

requirement (under Option B) by taking ENG/LIN 210 and ENG/LIN                     211 in any order.

   2) Attendance is mandatory from the first day of class for all students        

     including those on the waitlist.

 

ENG/LIN 210-401   HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANG                       MW 6:00-7:15             O’Hara

See description for ENG/LIN 210-001

 

ENG/LIN 210-402   HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANG                       TR 6:00-7:15               O’Hara

See description for ENG/LIN 210-001

 

ENG/LIN 211-001  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS I                   TR 3:30-4:45

 

ENG/LIN 211-002  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS I                   TR 5:00-6:45

 

ENG/LIN 211-003  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS I                   MWF 9:00-9:50           El-Guindy

 

ENG/LIN 211-004  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS I                   MWF 10:00-10:50       El-Guindy

 

ENG/LIN 211-005  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS I                   MWF 1:00-1:50           Barrett

This course is an introduction to the scientific study of human language, with an emphasis on the fundamental principles of linguistic theory, and applications of these principles in the investigation of grammatical structure, language change, language universals and typology, writing systems. The course will also focus on the application of linguistic study to real-world problems, e.g. language and technology. Credit will not be given to students who already have credit for ENG 414G. (Same as LIN 211.)

 

ENG/LIN 211-006  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS I                   TR 11:00-12:15          

 

ENG/LIN 211-007  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS I                   TR 2:00-3:15               O’Hara

PREREQUISITE: NONE

SCOPE of the course:  Linguistics is the scientific study of human language as a system. Everyone knows a language – but what does it mean to know a language? How are languages different from one another? How are they similar? This course introduces students to the major sub-fields of linguistics, focusing on the structure of human language (phonology, morphology, syntax), and concludes with a consideration of historical linguistics, including the historical development of the English language.

METHOD: Daily quizlets; quizzes on individual chapters; exams on related chapters; frequent in-class and periodic homework assignments to reinforce what has been learned in class. No cumulative mid-term or final.

TEXT: Contemporary Linguistics, William O’Grady, et al; 5th edition. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005.

 

ENG/LIN 211-008  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS I                   MWF 2:00-2:50           El-Guindy

 

ENG/LIN 211-401  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS I                   MW 5:30-6:45

 

ENG/LIN 212-001  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS II                  TR 9:30-10:45             Bosch

This is the second semester of a two-semester sequence introducing the study of Linguistics.  (However, LIN 211 is NOT currently a prerequisite for this course.)  Linguistics is the scientific study of human language as a system.  Everyone knows a language--but what does it mean to know a language?  How are languages different from one another?  How are they similar?  This course will introduce students to the social aspects of the study of linguistics, focusing on the issues and problems of interest within each of these fields; topics include semantics, first and second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, brain and language, psycholinguistics, and animal communication.  There will be frequent homework assignments and quizzes, and three exams.  Textbook: Contemporary Linguistics, 5th Edition, by O’Grady, Archibald, Aronoff, and Rees-Miller. 

 

ENG/LIN 212-002  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS II                  MWF 12:00-12:50       El-Guindy

See description for ENG/LIN 212-001

 

ENG/LIN 212-003  INTRO TO LINGUISTICS II                  TR 3:30-4:45               Lauersdorf

See description for ENG/LIN 212-001

 

ENG/LIN 310-001  AMERICAN ENGLISH                           TR 12:30-1:45             Bosch

This class will focus on spoken American English in all its variety.  How does your speech differ from mine?  How is it similar?  Can language change in the space of a generation? What's the difference between "good" English and "bad" English?  Can we (or do we) speak more than one dialect?  What do northerners say if they don't say "y'all"? This class covers various sociolinguistic topics based on language use in America, including differences based on geographic region, age, socio-economic status, ethnicity, and so on. You will gain practice writing, speaking, arguing, presenting a position, discussing it, testing a hypothesis, and following an idea through to its conclusion.  There will be weekly readings, 4 homework assignments, a final research paper, and a final oral report in class. 

 

LIN 318-001 SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS                  TR 11:00-12:15

 

LIN/ANT 319-001 HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS                   TR 11:00-12:15           Hippisley

 

ENG/LIN/ANT 516-001 GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS           TR 2:00-3:15               Hippisley

This course deals with the application of linguistic theory to the morphological, syntactic, and semantic analysis of natural languages.  We will discuss a variety of typological differences among languages, and we will develop a framework for describing these differences; in addition, we will investigate language universals of diverse kinds, and we will evaluate various recent attempts at explaining the existence of these universals.  Throughout, there will be a heavy emphasis on analyzing linguistic data from languages other than English. 

 

Topics covered will include all or part of:

 

·                     Morphological typology

·                     Constituents and syntactic categories

·                     Semantic roles and grammatical relations

·                     Lexical entries and well-formed clauses

·                     Noun phrases

·                     Case and agreement

·                     Tense and aspect

·                     Mood and modality

·                     Sentence types

·                     Subordinate clauses

·                     Inflection vs word formation

·                     Word-formation rules and valence

·                     Allomorphy

·                     Nonlinear morphology

·                     Clitics

·                     Special topic: basic colour terms

    

The textbook will be Paul Kroeger’s Analyzing Grammar (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

(Prerequisite:  ENG/LIN 211 or equivalent.)

 

LIN 517-001 SPECIAL TOPS LINGUISTICS: LANG & SEXUALITY  MWF 11:00-11:50 Barrett

This course considers the ways in which language shapes social understandings of sexual identity and sexual practice. We will begin by examining the relationship between normative understandings of sexual and gendered behaviors and linguistic categorization, including language-specific sexual/gender identity categories and the interactional emergence of sexual normativity in conversation. We will then focus on the role of language in shaping understandings of the body. We will examine differences in the ways in which male and female bodies are constructed through language and the ways in which language shapes perception of one's own body. We then discuss the language of sexual interaction, including the construction of a sexual identity in personal ads, sexual negotiation and the problem of date rape, and the role of sexual scripts in establishing normative sexual behavior. The class will then turn to the issue of language and sexual identity through research on lesbian, gay male, and transgender language in the areas of phonetics, semantics, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology.  Throughout the course, we will emphasize the relationship between research in linguistics and historical developments within Feminist Theory and Queer Theory.

 

Texts:
"The Language and Sexuality Reader" ed by Cameron and Kulick. Routledge 2006.
"Queer Theory: An Introduction" by Annamarie Jagose. NYU Press. 1997.

 

LIN 517-002 SPEC TOPS LINGUISTICS: LANG ACQUISITION   MWF 2:00-2:50  Dubravac

 

LIN 521-001 SANSKRIT II                             MWF 1:00-1:50                       Stump & Sathaye

The purpose of this course is to allow students who have completed LIN 520 (Sanskrit I) to pursue a deeper understanding of the Sanskrit language.  We will survey the Sanskrit literary traditions and we will translate and discuss representative texts from each chronological stratum of Old Indic; these texts will include selections from the Rig Veda ; the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa ; the Nalopākhyānam and the Bhagavad Gītā (both from the Mahābhārata);  Kālidāsa’s Meghadūta ; and others.  Toward the end of the semester, we will also draw upon our knowledge of Sanskrit to discuss a text in Pāli, the Middle Indic language of the earliest Buddhist scriptures.  The textbooks for the course will be William Dwight Whitney’s Sanskrit Grammar and Charles Rockwell Lanman’s Sanskrit Reader. 

            Students will prepare a number of Sanskrit texts (drawn mainly but not exclusively from Lanman’s reader) for class discussion; in addition, students will turn in written translations and grammatical analyses of four short passages.