For all: (25) 3 cr 

2054 4:40p-5:30p MWF Kobetts Miller**

2055 1:00p-2:15p TR  Woodcock**

2056 8:00a-8:50a MWF  Schroeder**

2057 9:05a-9:55a MWF  Nordloh (description follows)

2058 12:20p-1:10p MWF  Gutjahr** (description follows) 

2059 1:25p-2:15p MWF  Silbergleid** (description follows)

2060 2:30p-3:20p MWF  Silbergleid** (description follows)

2061 3:35p-4:25p MWF  

2062 8:00a-9:15a TR Carlson** (description follows)

2063 11:15a-12:30a TR Watt** (description follows)

2064 2:30p-3:45p TR Nash**


ALL COAS INTENSIVE WRITING SECTIONS 


Representative works of fiction; structural techniques in the novel.
Novels and short
stories from several ages and countries.


FOR NORDLOH SECTION 2057:


The word "fiction" is derived from a Latin root meaning "to make, to
counterfeit."  The
essence of an effective work of fiction is that it makes a world as
humanly dense and
interesting as our own by  counterfeiting  the reality of
persons, events, and
motives.  To say something is "fiction," then, is to distinguish the
unreal and imaginary
world created by the writer from fact and reality.  More importantly,
however, the word
draws attention to the process of making the resources a writer
employs to convey a sense of
the complexity of people, the specificity of time and place, and the
density of motive and
meaning so complete that we experience the invented world as fully as
we do our own. The
purpose of this course is to identify and explore those basic
resources of fiction plot,
point of view, characterization, symbol, and so on and to write
intelligently about them.
My premise throughout is that these elements embody the ways human
beings naturally organize
their perceptions of the world around them; they are not exotic
devices.


We'll begin by examining the elements of fiction individually, reading
groups of stories
offering examples of each element we can compare for a sense of its
uses.  Then we'll
discuss the elements working together in several longer short stories
or nouvelle, and
finally two novels.  The readings will range over the modern history
of fiction, from Poe to
the present day, and from England and America to the continent.
Texts will include an
introductory anthology of short stories, a collection of contemporary
international fiction,
and two contemporary novels in which story-telling itself is a topic
Toni Morrison's 
Beloved  and Leslie Marmon Silko's  Ceremony .
Participants will write frequent
short responses (1-2 pages) to study questions about the reading, and
five longer, more
formal essays (4-6 pages).  We'll use examples from this writing
activity in our ongoing
discussion of writing.  No examinations.  Insistent attendance.


FOR GUTJAHR SECTION 2058:


Fiction is friction.  While writers struggle to produce works, their
characters also
struggle, whether the conflict be over personal values, social mores,
metaphysical ideas or
material resources.  This course will explore how fiction is created
by friction on a number
of levels.  Specifically, we will analyze fiction in terms of the
friction created by
boundary transgression.  More simply put, we will read authors who are
deeply invested in
the idea of crossing from one state of things to another  and how
these crossings help to
create fiction.  Such crossings will include geographical,
generational, legal, and mortal
boundaries.


Although the reading list has yet to be determined, books will likely
include: Stephen
King's Different Seasons, Mario Puzo's The Godfather, M.
Martinez's
Crossing, Willa Cather's O Pioneer's, Amy Tan's The
Joy Luck Club, Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein, T.C. Boyle's Budding Prospects,
and Tim O'Brien's
The Things They Carried.  Students interested in taking this
section should be
prepared to do A LOT of reading and writing. The pace will rigorous
and rewarding.  A total
of roughly 30 pages of writing (both analytic and creative) will be
required, along with
extremely frequent reading quizzes.  The attendance policy will also
be strict.


FOR SILBERGLEID SECTIONS 2059 AND 2060:


This course will introduce students to the fundamental concepts of
reading and writing about
narrative fiction, including point of view, character, setting, plot,
and style.  We will
discuss the major forms of prose fiction, including the short story,
the short short story,
the novella, and the novel, looking at a range of examples from the
nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.  In so doing, we will construct our own narrative about the
development of
narrative fiction.  Thematically, this course will focus on the nature
of "fiction,"
particularly how we use fiction to explain and communicate personal
experience and
historical events.  What are the relationships between "fiction" and
"real" experience?  Is
fiction opposed to truth?  How does fiction differ from non-fiction,
in both content and
form?  In what ways are our understandings of narrative dependent on
notions of
fictionality?  How, finally, have our understandings of both narrative
and fiction changed
over the past two centuries?


Course requirements will include four major papers and frequent
responses to the reading, as
well as regular, thoughtful contributions to class discussion.  Texts
will include Herman
Melville's Benito Cereno, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar,
Kurt Vonnegut's
Slaughterhouse Five, Tim O'Brien's The Things They
Carried, Carole Maso's
The Art Lover, and a selection of short fiction.


FOR CARLSON SECTION 2062:


Samuel Taylor Coleridge defines imagination as “a representation in
the finite mind of the
eternal act of creation.”  This course seeks to introduce students to
the various techniques
used by fiction writers in making their imaginative creations come
alive for us, their
readers.  Throughout the semester, we will focus on topics ranging
from characterization to
narrative point of view, from symbolism to plotting.  The first half
of the course
concentrates on short fiction from the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, drawn from two
collections ( The Signet Anthology of Classic American Short
Stories and James
Moffet’s and Kenneth McElheny’s Points of View).  The
individual stories to be read
have been selected because they highlight specific elements of the
craft of fiction writing.
In the second half of the semester we will read three novels,
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The
House of Seven Gables , Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (a book
about the importance of
storytelling) and Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler
 (a book about
the pleasures and endless possibilities of reading).  Reading these
longer works will
provide students not only with an opportunity to consider more complex
examples of the
writer’s craft, but also with a chance to think about why and how
fiction matters in our
daily lives.

	

L204 satisfies the intensive writing requirement.  As such, students
should expect to write
several (right now I envision five) brief essays (4-6 pages long) as
well as a number of
short, informal response papers.  The responses will be integrated on
a weekly basis into
class discussion.  There may be a few modest creative assignments
during the course of the
semester.  Students will also take a comprehensive final examination.



FOR WATT SECTION 2063:


This section of L204 will focus on the development of modernist and
postmodern fiction,
beginning with a consideration of later Victorian fiction (Thomas
Hardy) and some of
modernism's most influential writers: Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence,
James Joyce, and Nella
Larsen.  It will then move to more problematic prose at mid-century
(Samuel Beckett) and
conclude with such contemporary writers as Sandra Cisneros and Salman
Rushdie.


Two papers plus mid-term and final examinations.