READ the instructions as you register. It will save you time in the long run! Remember that in the new registration system courses are numbered differently (e.g. ENG L202 becomes ENG-L 202, where “ENG-L” is the subject area and “202” is the catalog number.) Also remember to hit “submit” after you select each course. The word “success” will come up if you have enrolled in the class. Keep checking “view my schedule” to make sure it is correct. Make a record of your waitlist request(s) and your “drop if enrolled” requests! Remember, a waitlist request will not be honored if there is a time conflict with another waitlist request or enrolled class unless you have put it under “drop if enrolled.”
This course is designed to help students in any field develop writing and research skills which will be useful in the professional world and any future writing project. This course concentrates on the writing of concise, informative prose, and emphasizes the importance of writing with a clearly defined purpose and audience. Assignments will be based on general principles of communication but will usually take the form of writing done in the world of work: letters, memos, summaries, and abstracts, reports, proposals, etc. Students will often be able to write on subjects related to their field of study. The course requires constant, careful attention to writing and rewriting, and many classes will be conducted as workshops, with writing exercises and detailed discussion of the work of class members.
PREREQUISITE: Completion of the English Composition requirement.
Students will often be able to write on subjects related to their field of study. The course requires constant, careful attention to writing and rewriting, and many classes will be conducted as workshops, with writing exercises and detailed discussion of the work of class members.
10:10a-11:00a MWF (25 students) 3 cr.
4:00p-5:15p TR (25 students) 3 cr.
Offers instruction and practice in writing argumentative essays about complicated and controversial issues. The course focuses on strategies for identifying issues, assessing claims, locating evidence, deciding on a position, and writing papers with clear assertions and convincing arguments.
Principles of editing and publishing literary writing. Kinds of journals, varieties of formats (including print and e-zine), introduction to editing and production processes. Possible focus on genre publishing (fiction, poetry, non-fiction prose), grant writing, Web publishing, etc.
W350 ADVANCED EXPOSITORY WRITING
Staff
PREREQUISITE: Completion of the English Composition requirement.
7443 – 9:30a-10:45a TR (25 students) 3 cr. IW.
7444 – 1:00p-2:15p TR (25 students) 3 cr. IW.
7445 – 4:00p-5:15p TR (25 students) 3 cr. IW.
Advanced writing course focuses on the interconnected activities of writing and reading, especially the kinds of responding, analyzing, and evaluating that characterize work in many fields in the university. Topics vary from semester to semester.
W203 CREATIVE WRITING
Staff
Fiction:
10126 10:10a-11:00a MWF (15 students) 3 cr.
10128 1:25p-2:15p MWF (15 students) 3 cr. Briscoe, Foster, McNutt residents. 10130 9:30a-10:45a TR (15 students) 3 cr.
10131 11:15a-12:30p TR (15 students) 3 cr.
10132 1:00p2:15p TR (15 students) 3 cr.
10133 2:30p-3:45p TR (15 students) 3 cr. Ashton, Teter, Wright, Eigenmann residents.
Poetry:
10136 12:20p-1:10p MWF (15 students) 3 cr.
10138 1:00p-2:15p TR (15 students) 3 cr.
10139 2:30p-3:45p TR (15 students) 3 cr.
Fiction and Poetry:
10140 9:30a-10:45a TR (15 students) 3 cr.
PREREQUISITES: English major or W103 or permission of Director, Creative Writing. Call department at 812-855-9539 for online authorization.
In this creative writing course, students will write their own poems and/or short stories and experiment with an exciting array of writing exercises and assignments. Students will be assigned an anthology, or several collections of poems and/or stories to read and discuss in class. These stories and poems will serve as models for students to explore and practice their own work. There will be intensive workshop sessions where each student's poems and stories are discussed in a friendly and supportive atmosphere. Two to three stories or seven poems will be discussed thoroughly in class. Small classes (15 students or less).
W103 INTRODUCTORY CREATIVE WRITING
Richard Cecil
Lecture:
7284 2:30p-3:20p M (105 students) 3 cr.
Discussion:
7285 11:15a-12:05p WF (15 students)
7286 12:20p-1:10p WF (15 students)
12493 12:20p-1:10p WF (15 students)
7287 1:25p-2:15p WF (15 students)
11567 1:25p-2:15p WF (15 students)
7288 2:30p-3:20p WF (15 students)
7289 2:30p-3:20p WF (15 students)
This is a course designed to help students write their own poems and stories, as well as provide insight into the way that literature is created by individual writers working within or against a tradition. The class will meet as a large group on Mondays for lectures about the elements of poetry and fiction, in-class exercises, poetry and fiction readings, and tests. On Wednesdays and Fridays small group sections will meet to discuss the assigned material students have read and the original work students have written.
Required Texts: Penguin Poetry: A Pocket Anthology, 5 th edition, ed R.S. Gwynn
Penguin Fiction: A Pocket Anthology. 5 th edition, ed R.S. Gwynn
Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling by Maura Stanton
Against Which by Ross Gay
NOTE: This course does not satisfy the English composition requirement.
W203 CREATIVE WRITING
Staff
PREREQUISITE: English major, W103 or permission of the Director of Creative Writing Program.
Fiction:
7411 – 10:10a-11:00a MWF (15 students) 3 cr.
7412 – 1:25p-2:15p MWF (15 students) 3 cr.
7413 – 9:30a-10:45a TR (15 students) 3 cr.
7414 – 11:15a-12:30p TR (15 students) 3 cr.
7415 – 1:0p-2:15p TR (15 students) 3 cr.
7416 – 2:30p-3:45p TR (15 students) 3 cr.
Poetry:
7418 – 1:00p-2:15p TR (15 students) 3 cr.
7419 – 2:30p-3:45p TR (15 students) 3 cr.
Fiction and Poetry:
7420 – 9:30a-10:45a TR (15 students) 3 cr.
Exploratory course in the writing of poetry and/or fiction. May be repeated once under a different topic.
W280 7440 LITERARY EDITING AND PUBLISHING
Staff
PREREQUISITE: Completion of the English Composition requirement.
12:20p-1:10p MWF (18 students) 3 cr.
Principles of editing and publishing literary writing. Kinds of journals, varieties of formats (including print and e-zine), introduction to editing and production processes. Possible focus on genre publishing (fiction, poetry, non-fiction prose), grant writing, Web publishing, etc.
W301 7441 WRITING FICTION
Anthony Ardizzone
PREREQUISITE: W203 or equivalent. Requires permission of instructor.
11:15a-12:30p TR (15 students) 3 cr.
The basic idea behind this creative writing workshop is that students learn best about writing fiction by writing and by listening to others constructively and objectively discuss their work in class. Students also learn by talking about their work with the instructor in conference and by rewriting. The aims of the course are to advance each individual student’s writing level and to help students develop a sound critical sense about both the genre of literary fiction as well as their own work. In addition to submitting at least two short stories or novel chapters (approximately 40-45 pages), students will read, critique, and discuss each other's creative work as well as the course's texts. The class will also discuss working habits and the writing process, examine several examples of contemporary fiction, write some technical analyses of contemporary fiction, and learn related aspects of fictional craft and technique.
If you’re interested in enrolling in this workshop, please send me an email containing the following information: (1) a list of your previous creative writing courses along with your instructor’s name and the semester in which you took the course, (2) a representative sample of your work (10-15 pages), and (3) any other information about yourself and/or your writing that you think pertinent. I’ll notify you about authorization within a day or two after receiving your email. I look forward to reading your fiction and working with you next semester.
Send your email to ardizzon@indiana.edu
Texts: Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott.
Writing Fiction, by Janet Burroway.
The Habit of Art: Best Stories from the Indiana University Fiction Workshop, edited by Tony Ardizzone.
W301 14364 WRITING FICTION
Timothy Westmoreland
PREREQUISITE: W203 or equivalent. Requires permission of instructor.
1:00p-2:15p MW (15 students) 3 cr.
Students interested in this class should promptly submit 15-20 pages of fiction, together with a list of other creative writing classes they have taken and pertinent biographical information about themselves, to my mailbox in BH442. Students admitted to the course will be notified by e-mail, and on-line authorizations for admission will be issued by the Creative Writing Secretary.
W303 7442 WRITING POETRY
Debra Kang Dean
PREREQUISITE: Requires permission of the instructor.
1:00p-2:15p TR (15 students) 3 cr.
In this workshop-format class, we’ll write ten poems that take as a starting point a poem in our texts; at the end of the semester, you’ll submit revisions of five of these for your final portfolio. The assignments will be a mix of formal and subject-based exercises, which both students and teacher will provide. In addition to writing poems and offering both written and oral comments on poems that are discussed during a workshop week, throughout the term you’ll write responses to poems from your texts and provide in-depth critical responses to one other student’s poems.
To apply to this class, place five poems, your e- mail address, and a list of creative writing classes you’ve taken (and names of instructors) into Cathy Bowman’s or Debra Kang Dean’s mailbox in BH 442 at least one week before your registration day. Submit your manuscript as soon as possible, as places will be filled as people apply – if you have a late registration date, apply at the beginning of the period to reserve a space. No places will be saved for late registration. Those admitted to the class will be informed by email. After you have been approved, the Creative Writing Secretary in BH 442 will issue you an on-line authorization.
Texts: Frances Mayes, *The Discovery of Poetry*
Three required collections of contemporary poetry.
W311 27023 WRITING CREATIVE NONFICTION
Robert Bledsoe
PREREQUISITE: Requires permission of instructor.
2:30p-3:45p MW (15 students) 3 cr.
This course will focus on the personal essay, and “telling true stories.” We will study various forms of creative nonfiction, essays that contain truth rather than “truthiness,” candor instead of ambiguity. Our discussions of these essays will explore the techniques, styles, and approaches of published writers in this genre.
Students will write a series of short essays (1000 words), and two longer essays (2500-3000 words), which we will discuss using the workshop method. I intend to foster a safe, supportive atmosphere where students can share their work. Please email me at robledso@indiana.edu for information.
W381 14365 THE CRAFT OF FICTION
Timothy Westmoreland
PREREQUISITE: W203, W301 or permission of the Director of Creative Writing. Requires permission of the instructor.
4:00p-5:15p MW (30 students) 3cr. W381 emphasizes the study of the techniques used in the writing of fiction, including narrative point of view, narrative distance, plot, characterization, setting, and tone, as well as the structural elements of forms such as realism, magic realism, and metafiction. Students will write both critical responses to the course readings as well as a series of creative exercises illustrating their ability to use the specific narrative techniques studied. The course is designed for students interested in creative writing. Probable texts will include a mix of critical works (Aspects of the Novel, by E. M. Forster; The Rhetoric of Fiction, by Wayne C. Booth; and others), as well as a selection of fiction (Ice At the Bottom of the World, by Mark Richard, Baron in the Trees, by Italo Calvino; and others).
W401 7446 ADVANCED FICTION WRITING
Anthony Ardizzone
PREREQUISITE: W301. Requires permission of the instructor.
2:30p-3:45p TR (15 students) 3 cr.
The basic idea behind this creative writing workshop is that students learn best about writing fiction by writing and by listening to others constructively and objectively discuss their work in class. Students also learn by talking about their work with the instructor in conference and by rewriting. The aims of the course are to advance each individual student’s writing level and to help students develop a sound critical sense about both the genre of literary fiction as well as their own work. In addition to submitting at least two short stories or novel chapters (approximately 45-50 pages), students will read, critique, and discuss each other's creative work as well as the course's texts. The class will also analyze and discuss the two texts devoted to a discussion of fictional craft, examine several examples of contemporary fiction, technically analyze these examples, and learn related aspects of fictional craft and technique.
If you’re interested in enrolling in this advanced-level workshop, please send me an email containing the following information: (1) a list of your previous creative writing courses along with your instructor’s name and the semester in which you took the course, (2) a representative sample of your work (10-15 pages), and (3) any other information about yourself and/or your writing that you think pertinent. I’ll notify you about authorization within a day or two after receiving your email. I look forward to reading your fiction and working with you next semester.
Send your email to ardizzon@indiana.edu
Texts: The Art of Fiction, John Gardner
Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular, Rust Hills
The Habit of Art: Best Stories from the Indiana University Fiction Workshop, edited by Tony Ardizzone.
W403 7447 ADVANCED POETRY WRITING
Ross Gay
PREREQUISITE: W303. Permission of instructor.
11:15a-12:30p TR (15 students) 3 cr.
In this class we will consider the variety of ways good poems get made.
To that end, we will read a good deal of poetry. In addition to this, though, we will study other arts that, to me, are related: comedy, fiction, essays, music, etc. So although this class is a workshop, be prepared to engage a lot of material outside of the genre.
In addition to class discussion, students will be required to give at least one presentation, write two short (5 pg) essays, and meet weekly with a classmate outside of class to discuss a book of their choice.
Among the books we will be reading are Patrick Rosal’s My American Kundiman, Aracelis Girmay’s Teeth, and Steve Scafidi’s For Love of Common Words.
L202 7231 LITERARY INTERPRETATION
John Schilb
PREREQUISITE: Completion of the English Composition requirement.
Open to majors and declared minors only.
10:10a-11:00a MWF (25 students) 3 cr. A&H, IW.
In this course, we will define and practice “interpretation” with the aim of helping you analyze literature with greater insight and persuasiveness. In particular, we will spend much time discussing how to write about literature, so that you will grow more able to compose thoughtful, well-supported studies of such works. Our class format will be almost entirely discussion. For the most part, reading selections will consist of poems and short stories, though we will also read at least one play and Cormac McCarthy’s recent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road. Required writing will include three formal papers (approx. 5 pages each) and several brief, informal exercises.
L202 7232 LITERARY INTERPRETATION
Penelope Anderson
PREREQUISITE: Completion of the English Composition requirement.
Open to majors and declared minors only.
9:05a-9:55a MWF (25 students) 3 cr. A&H, IW.
TOPIC: Real and Imagined Worlds
What counts as a literary argument? What kinds of evidence does literary argumentation require? What makes some interpretations more compelling than others (and do all strong interpretations work in the same ways)? As a means of proposing some answers to these questions, we will explore a wide historical and generic range of texts that describe and create real or fantastical places. By looking at these texts’ evocation of the extraordinary and the implausible, we will articulate the grounds of persuasion and proof.
This course is designed to sharpen your critical reading skills through in-depth analysis of poetry, drama, and fiction and to improve your writing skills so that you can articulate those interpretations clearly, grammatically, and persuasively. Consequently, this course is writing-intensive: you will be writing and revising every week, in class and out of it. Class requirements include mandatory attendance, active participation, and the willingness to engage actively and respectfully with course texts and with varying interpretations.
L202 7233 LITERARY INTERPRETATION
Dana Anderson
PREREQUISITE: Completion of the English Composition requirement.
Open to majors and declared minors only.
1:25p-2:15p MWF (25 students) 3 cr. A&H, IW.
TOPIC: “Bigger than Ourselves”
This course will help you develop the critical skills necessary for interpreting, discussing, and writing about literary texts. To that end, we will learn and practice strategies for appreciating a wide range of genres (including poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction) from across an equally wide range of historical periods. Our texts will be focused around the theme of how people envision, address, engage, and cope with forces much larger than they are. These could be institutional/governmental forces, forces of nature, divine or spiritual forces—you’ll just have to join us to see how gloriously varied the possibilities are. Much of the work of this course will be carried on through class discussion and other class activities, so regular attendance and participation are expected. Assignments will consist of quizzes, several smaller microthemes, three shorter, formal papers, and a final exam.
L202 7234 LITERARY INTERPRETATION
Staff
PREREQUISITE: Completion of the English Composition requirement.
Open to majors and declared minors only.
9:30a-10:45a TR (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
Development of critical skills essential to participation in the interpretive process. Through class discussion and focused writing assignments, introduces the premises and motives of literary analysis and critical methods associated with historical, generic, and/or cultural concerns.
L202 7235 LITERARY INTERPRETATION
Mary Favret
PREREQUISITE: Completion of the English Composition requirement.
Open to Hutton Honors College students only.
7235 – 2:30p- 3:45p TR (20 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
In an essay titled “Reading,” Maurice Blanchot suggests what how much is – and is not -- involved in the work of reading:
"Reading that accepts the work for what it is and in so doing unburdens it of its author, does not consist of replacing the author with a reader, a fully existent person, who has a history, a profession, a religion. . . . Reading is not a conversation, it does not discuss, it does not question. It never asks the book – and certainly not the author – “What exactly did you mean?” . . . . Only the nonliterary book is presented as a stoutly woven web of determined significations, as an entity made up of real affirmations: before it is read by anyone, the nonliterary book has been read by everyone. . . . But the book whose source is art has no guarantee in the world, and when it is read, it has never been read before; it only attains its presence as a work in the space opened by this unique reading, each time the first reading and the each time the only reading."
This is a course about the work of reading works of writing. Whether one agrees with Blanchot or not, his discussion raises the question of the inter-dependency of reading and works of literature: one cannot be without the other. This course will offer training in the use of various tools for reading – primarily the tools of close, formal textual analysis -- applying them to a series of literary texts. But it will also consider what it might mean to produce a “unique reading,” a “first reading.” In a graduated series of short papers, students will experiment with various modes of interpretive analysis; these assignments will be designed to underscore the tight nexus of writing-reading-writing at the heart of our work in this course. The works we read will range from short poems to short stories, a play (probably Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night), one assigned novel (Ian McEwan’s Atonement) and one contemporary novel, to be chosen by the student in conversation with the instructor.
L202 7236 LITERARY INTERPRETATION
Margo Crawford
PREREQUISITE: Completion of the English Composition requirement.
Open to majors and declared minors only.
1:00p-2:15p TR (25 students) 3 cr. A&H. IW.
TOPIC: “Literary Analysis and Ethnic Studies”
This course teaches the fundamentals of literary analysis as it focuses on a range of genres (poetry, prose poetry, novels, short stories, and drama). Our examination of different genres will be shaped around four units: 1) poetry and prose poetry; 2) drama about poetry; 3) novels about drama; and 4) short stories and metanarrative. In the first unit, we will begin with a compilation entitled “Great American Prose Poems” and then move to a study of the drama of poetry itself through a focus on the work of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes and their vexed relationship. Our second unit “Drama about Poetry” will pivot on Margaret Edson’s representation of the study of poetry in her play Wit. The turn of the century text Sister Carrie will be our bridge to the novel genre as we consider Dreiser’s depiction of drama and the performativity of gender. The novel Sister Carrie grew out of Dreiser’s experience as a journalist. Questions about journalism and literature will be a smooth segue to our next destination in this “novels about drama” section. We will move from Dreiser to a contemporary writer’s riff on journalism versus literature and his rewriting of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. This experimentation with form in this contemporary novel Philadelphia Fire (1990) will also raise many questions about differences and similarities between short stories, poetry, and novels. The use of a narrator who struggles to be an accurate reporter will lead us to our final analysis of the short story cycle Winesburg, Ohio, with the young reporter George Willard.
During this intensive writing course, you will write a total of twenty pages. There will be weekly reading quizzes and a final exam.
L203 7237 INTRODUCTION TO DRAMA
Staff
12:20p-1:10p MWF (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
Representative significant plays to acquaint students with characteristics of drama as a type of literature. Readings will include plays from several ages and countries.
L204 INTRODUCTION TO FICTION
Staff
15855 – 8:00a-8:50a MWF (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
7238 – 9:05a-9:55a MWF (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
7239 – 10:10a-11:00a MWF (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
7240 – 11:15a-12:05p MWF (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
7241 – 12:20p-1:10a MWF (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
7242 – 1:25p-2:15p MWF (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
7243 – 2:30p-3:20p MWF (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
12495– 2:30p-3:20p MWF (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
7244 – 8:00a-9:15a TR (25 students) 3 cr. A&H, IW.
7245 – 9:30a-10:45a TR (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
7246 – 11 :15a-12:30p TR (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
7247 – 1:00p-2:15p TR (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
7248 – 1:00p-2:15p TR (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
12496 – 2:30p-3:45p TR (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
7249 – 4:00p-5:15p TR (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
15786 – 4:00p-5:15p TR (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
7250 – 5:45p-7:00p TR (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
Representative works of fiction; structural techniques in the novel. Novels and short stories from several ages and countries.
L205 7251 INTRODUCTION TO POETRY
Debra Kang Dean
9:30a-10:45a TR (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
Kinds, conventions, and elements of poetry in a selection of poems from several historical periods.
L205 7252 INTRODUCTION TO POETRY
Staff
9:05a-9:55a MWF (25 students) 3 cr. A&H,IW.
Kinds, conventions, and elements of poetry in a selection of poems from several historical periods.
L208 25251 TOPICS IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE
Mark Harrison
TOPIC: The Myth and Literature of the American Hobo
4:00p-5:15p TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
Through much of the twentieth century, the hobo was the figure par excellenceof American freedom. This course will examine the myth and lore of this, once celebrated, now all but disappeared, avatar of the boundless. Through an examination of previous enfigurations of the wanderer and close readings of various accounts, both first and second hand, of the vagabond life, we will address such questions as: Why is the hobo so readily romanticized as an emblem of freedom?; What was life as a hobo actually like?; and Why has the hobo as cultural icon all but disappeared from the American consciousness and what does this imply about contemporary U.S. culture?
Potential texts include:
You Can’t Win—Jack Black
Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha—Ben L. Reitman
Bound for Glory—Woody Guthrie
Kings in Disguise-- James Vance, Dan Burr, and Alan Moore
On Hobos and Homelessness—Nels Anderson
L220 7253 INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE
Staff
12:20p-1:10p MWF (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
Rapid reading of at least a dozen of Shakespeare’s major plays and poems. May not be taken concurrently with L313 or L314.
L230 12499 INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE FICTION
DeWitt Kilgore
2:30p-3:20p MWF (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
TOPIC: “Finding New Worlds: The Evolution of American Science Fiction”
Over the eighty years of its development American science fiction (SF) has become a rich body of texts dramatizing the interaction of science, technology and society, exploring the connection between physical knowledge, private aspiration and public destiny. The principle aim of this course will be to examine SF as a genre that comments on our present by imagining future alternatives. We will attend to how the genre links developments in science and technology with ongoing social concerns regarding race, gender and our desire to improve humankind. We will explore how the genre's conventions address earthly fears and hopes through themes such as space travel, alien contact, robotics, technological utopianism, and human evolution. Authors will likely include James Blish, Robert A. Heinlein, Joe Haldeman, H. G Wells, and Octavia E. Butler. Critical readings will supplement our reading, thinking, writing and discussion. This course requires two papers (3-5 typewritten pages, double-spaced), two exams, one research team project, active and informed classroom participation and attendance.
E301 LITERATURES IN ENGLISH TO 1600
Staff
7212 – 1:25p-2:15p MWF (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
7211 – 2:30p-3:45p TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
Open to majors and declared minors only.
The historical study of literature in English for the period 450 to 1600.
E302 7213 LITERATURES IN ENGLISH, 1600-1800
Linda Charnes
1:00p-2:15p TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
TOPIC: “From Monarchy to Democracy”
This course considers a range of texts, literary and extra literary, written during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Beginning with Shakespeare's King Lear in the context of Jacobean England, we will end with Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women in the context of the impact of the American and French Revolutions. Along the way we'll read works by Donne, Milton, Swift, Aphra Behn, Pope, Rochester, Paine, Jefferson, and Tocqueville, and others who influenced the shift in English and transatlantic culture from 1600 to1800. We will pay special attention to how the assumptions of the "age of reason" shifted literary focus away from a politics couched largely in religious, philosophical, and ethical terms onto concerns with manners, "civility," and the nuances of "polite" social behavior. We will explore from a number of critical and theoretical perspectives a period of time that moved from debates about Divine Providence and "fixed" human nature to debates about rational scientific progress and the power of individual reason and that continued to debate whether women are "innately" inferior or are socially trained to be so. We will look at how the notion of "the literary" itself is produced as a cultural category during this time period. And we will study the ways authors achieve aesthetic effects with specific social and historical contexts.
Requirements: There will be three short papers, a midterm and a final exam. Attendance and participation in discussion is mandatory, and will count for a portion of the course grade.
E303 7214 LITERATURES IN ENGLISH, 1800-1900
Staff
4:00p-5:15p TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
Representative study of nineteenth-century British and American literature in the context of transatlantic cultural developments.
E303 12500 LITERATURES IN ENGLISH, 1800-1900
Joss Marsh
9:30a-10:45a TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
The American nineteenth century was an era of Westward expansion, high idealism, and national coming-to-consciousness, in the joint contexts of rampant racism and triumphant materialism. Across the Atlantic, in Britain, the century witnessed the apogee of Imperial dominance and industrial power, and the world's first and most resonating eruptions of urban squalor and scientific disturbance, leading to widespread religious doubt; while cracks began to appear in rigid Victorian gender ideology. This course weaves back and forth between the two countries (with one foray into Australia) to explore such topics as: Nature and the sublime in the Romantic Revolution; American self-making and the abyss of race; sex, class, and British identity; democracy; historicism and revolution; nineteenth-century psychology; celebrity, theatre, and mass entertainment; landscape and destiny in the American West; faith, doubt, and the “death of God”; Imperial gothic; and the transatlantic fin de siècle. Authors and texts include Charles Dickens ( A Tale of Two Cities), Robert Louis Stevenson ( Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), Thomas Hardy ( Tess of the D’Urbervilles), Mark Twain ( Roughing It), and the dime novel Deadwood Dick, together with the Narrative of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, and a substantial selection from Francis Parkman’s unique travelogue The Oregon Trail, as well as poems, stories, and prose works by Walt Whitman ( Leaves of Grass), Emily Dickinson, William Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, John Keats, Lord Byron, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lord Tennyson, Bret Harte, Nathanial Hawthorne, Conan Doyle, and Edgar Allen Poe. Classes will alternate between formal lectures (some multi-media) and open discussion—to which end every class member is required to post a discussion question to the class e-mail list every week. Two mid-terms (short questions and passage for analysis); two papers (one short, one long); cumulative final exam (short questions, passage, comparative essay).
E304 7215 LITERATURES IN ENGLISH, 1900-PRESENT
Scott Herring
4:00p-5:15p TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
TOPIC: “Slumming Literatures”
This course swerves primarily through about six decades of American literary cultures to track “slumming” literatures and the cultural phenomena that inform them. By “slumming,” I refer to vice reformers chronicling “how the other half lives,” whites reporting when Harlem was in vogue and U.S. expatriates exploring the “underworlds” of the Parisian Left Bank. Scholars have recently analyzed these ventures as sensational forms of urban colonialism. They argue that the act of slumming and its complementary narratives helped to define socio-economic, racial, and sexual differences during the first half of the twentieth-century. With guidance from a few historians and cultural critics, we certainly won’t deny these claims. But we will also focus on how the so-called “other half” deployed the literary conventions of “slumming” to resist such static labeling then and now, now and then, and to manipulate the gaze of voyeurs/readers searching for vices and marveling at vogues. Readings will include: Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl from the Streets; several excerpts from the “mysteries of the city” genre; a unit on the Down Low; James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man; the sensational journal sketches of Djuna Barnes; Mike Gold, Jews Without Money; Claude McKay, Home to Harlem; Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Few Figs from Thistles; Susanna Moore, In the Cut; Eugene O’Neill, The Hairy Ape; Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives; Mae West, The Drag; Richard Wright, 12 Million Black Voices; and two films, Freaks and Adventures in Babysitting.
E304 7217 LITERATURES IN ENGLISH, 1900-PRESENT
Staff
10:10a-11:00a MWF (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
Representative study of twentieth-century literatures in English. In addition to Britain and North America, cultural locations may include the Indian subcontinent, Australasia, anglophone Africa, the Caribbean, etc. Focus on themes associated with modernity and cross-cultural contacts.
L305 7254 CHAUCER
Karma Lochrie
11:15a-12:30p TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
This course is an introduction to the Middle English language and a study of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in terms of the tumultuous fourteenth century. Issues of class, gender, and race will be in the forefront of our study, and students will be expected to research these issues from assigned web sites and readings. In addition, we will be paying ongoing attention to the multiple ways in which the “medieval” functions in modern culture by looking at relevant movies, the recent BBC series presenting modern versions of the tales, and a recent novel by Peter Ackroyd, The Clerkenwell Tales. Course requirements will include several translation quizzes, two papers, a midterm and final exam.
L313 7255 EARLY PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE
Staff
4:00p-5:15p TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
Close reading of at least seven early plays of Shakespeare.
L314 7256 LATE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE
Ellen MacKay
9:30a-10:45a TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
In this course we will read examples of Shakespeare's later tragedies, histories, comedies, and romances as a body of dramatic literature that wields a great deal of present influence, and one that supplies us with compelling evidence of a culture that is simultaneously familiar to, and wildly dissimilar from, our own. As we study Shakespeare's take on issues as varied as the marriage bond, the politics of conquest, the problems of neo-classicism, and the complex relation of theatricality to 'truth,' we will also discuss the ways Shakespeare's dramaturgy changes over time, leading to the emergence of new genres and dramatic styles.
In order to situate our chosen texts in critical context, we will undertake close readings of the plays alongside careful analysis of some representative secondary criticism. Each member of the class will complete at least two presentations, one on a selection from a dramatic work and another on a critical essay, both of which involve a written component. The course requirements also include a midterm and three papers--two very short (2 pp.) and one longer, research essay on an idea developed from one of the shorter assignments.
Plays: Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida, All's Well That Ends Well, King Lear, Macbeth, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest.
L317 14373 ENGLISH POETRY OF THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Kathy Smith
11:15a-12:30p TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
This course is designed to enable students to read and thereby to acquire an understanding and appreciation of the poetry of Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Crashaw, Jonson, Herrick, and Marvell while at the same time introducing the historical, cultural, and intellectual contexts contributing to the creation of their poetry. To that end, we will identify and practice strategies for reading and writing about early seventeenth century English poetry in the context of daily class discussions, informal and formal writing assignments, and a comprehensive final exam. Attendance is required and daily participation expected.
L320 14374 RESTORATION AND EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE
Penelope Anderson
11:15a-12:05p MWF (30 students) 3 cr., A&H.
TOPIC: "Early Modern Women’s Writing (1640-1750)"
Early modern women’s writing – once thought of as non-existent or inconsequential – comes in an exhilarating variety of forms written on a wide range of topics. For this course, we will explore Restoration and early eighteenth century women’s writing in all its diversity, while considering what it means to study “women’s writing.” We will begin with early modern debates about “womankind”: Did women have souls? Did they have political rights? How did their bodies work, and how should laws regulate the actions of those bodies? Throughout, we will also consider the ways in which these early modern texts illuminate and are illuminated by contemporary criticism, investigating the categories of sex and gender, the impact of queer studies, and the relations between race and gender. Authors will include Margaret Cavendish, Katherine Philips, Lucy Hutchinson, Aphra Behn, Delarivier Manley, Mary Astell, Anne Finch, Eliza Haywood, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and Charlotte Lennox, among others.
Requirements for the course include attendance and active participation, one short paper, one presentation on an assigned topic (biographical, historical, or critical), and a final research paper. For the shorter paper, you will use library resources and Early English Books Online or Eighteenth Century Collections Online to address the intersections between the material form of a text and its meaning. The work for the course will culminate in a long research paper on a related topic of your choosing.
L332 14377 ROMANTIC LITERATURE
Nick Williams
10:10a-11:00a MWF (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
The British Romantic period (1789-1832) is one that saw revolutions in both literary sensibilities and sociopolitical structures. On the literary side, it signals an explosion of cultural activity of an entirely new variety (particularly in the poetic genres). Among the poets and novelists whose careers fall in this period are William Blake (1757-1827), Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1798), William Wordsworth (1770-1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Jane Austen (1775-1817), Lord Byron (1788-1824), Percy Shelley (1792- 1822), John Keats (1795-1821) and Mary Shelley (1797-1851). In social and political developments, England felt the cataclysmic shocks of the French Revolution (beginning in 1789 with the storming of the Bastille), among whose effects must be numbered the pressure for increased democratization (leading to the vote for adult property-owning males in 1832) and the abolition of the slave trade in England (1807). Readings will come from many of the authors listed above, including Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Wollstonecraft’s Maria and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Assignments will include 2 or 3 interpretive essays, a mid-term and a final.
L346 27502 TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRITISH FICTION
Ranu Samantrai 11:15a-12:30p TR (30 students) 3 cr., A&H.
In this course we will read some of the major writers who have shaped English fiction since the mid-twentieth century. Arranged chronologically, our texts will be chosen to follow the significant aesthetic and philosophical developments of the period. Brief, in-class lectures will provide the historical context for mapping this intellectual trajectory. Beginning with a couple of early century texts to situate ourselves in the legacies of realism and modernism (most likely by Conrad and Woolf), we will go on to read the key texts of new realism, postmodernism, postcolonial fiction, and the new, ironic realism called neo-historicism. Because the aesthetics of prose in this period owe considerably to dramatic works, we will include some plays in our list of readings. On occasion we will turn also to film to consider the impact of this visual and aural medium on narrative conventions. Throughout the semester we will discuss the intricate relationship between form and content, where authors struggle to say the unsayable, to make room for untold stories, and to create narratives that reflect and participate in the world-altering events of their remarkable times. Authors likely will include Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, John Osborne, Sam Selvon, Harold Pinter, Angela Carter, Tom Stoppard, Kazuo Ishiguro, Pat Barker, Salman Rushdie, and Julian Barnes.
L348 25254 NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH FICTION
Rae Greiner
1:00p-2:15p TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
TOPIC: “Historical Novels, or the Novel and History”
You are probably already somewhat accustomed to hearing about the importance of reading literature in “context”: it’s that shady historical background—the events, the people, the culture, the “times”—that, we say, provides us with a lens through which to approach a given text that we might otherwise make the mistake of treating as if it were an autonomous object (to be read and appreciated, as they say, “for its own sake”). Despite our best intentions, however, the subject of “context” remains nebulous at best, as does its relation to the literary artifacts produced in its intractable midst: how can we measure, or even describe, how context shapes a literary text? To what degree are novels the “product of” a given historical context, or, conversely, their authors’ imaginative attempts to move beyond it? Why do we need to rely on foreign words—milieu, mise-en-scene, Zeitgeist, purlieu—to talk about the “spirit” or “scene” or “ground” characterizing (or delimiting) a particular era? To what uses are (arbitrary? or historical?) terms like “Romantic” or “Victorian” put in literary study? How, for instance, can we justify talking about “the Victorian novel” when such labels are always belated or retroactive, making sense only “after-the-fact”?
This class is reading-intensive: we’ll read long novels and (sometimes) dense critical and historical materials. As the nineteenth century is the age of the “triple-decker” novel, you must be ready to devote a significant amount of time each week to reading. That said, we will not rush through these novels, and will hope to conjoin breadth with depth. While I insist that you purchase the editions I’ve ordered for this class, you are welcome to purchase them used or online (in every case an option) in order to save on the expense. Assignments will include four short (but challenging) papers, one longer paper (7 pages), a midterm and final, and unannounced reading quizzes and in-class exercises.
The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel , ed. Deirdre David ( Cambridge)
A Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture , ed. Herbert Tucker (Blackwell)
The Monk (1796), Matthew Lewis
Waverley , or, Tis Sixty Years Hence (1814), Sir Walter Scott
Persuasion (1818), Jane Austen
Vanity Fair (1847-8)¸ William MakepeaceThackeray
Mary Barton (1848), Elizabeth Gaskell
A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Charles Dickens
Middlemarch (1871-2), George Eliot
L351 7257 AMERICAN LITERATURE 1800-1865
Christoph Irmscher
11:15a-12:30p TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
This course is designed to give students an overview of what is usually considered the formative period in American literary history, from the end of Jefferson’s administration to the end of the Civil War. Throughout the course, our emphasis will be on close reading. Focusing on short passages, we will try to assess how writers have tried to make their texts “work” and the ways in which these texts, after all these years, still speak to us. At the same time, we will also try to increase our understanding of a particular historical situation, of a time in which certain kinds of writing mattered more to readers than others. We will pay attention to some themes that resonate through these texts, the emergence of an American national consciousness, for example, the function of sentimentality, the shifting conceptions of American nature, the specter of race and violence, and the plight of the working class, and we will ask ourselves how changes in the literary marketplace affected conceptions of authorship. A particular focus of the course will be the emergence of female authors, from Hannah Foster’s The Coquette (1797) to Elizabeth Stoddard’s 1861 novel The Morgesons.
For the sake of convenience, we will rely mainly on the selections in part B of The Norton Anthology, vol. 1, to be supplemented by the Dover edition of Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century and the Penguin editions of Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall and Elizabeth Stoddard’s The Morgesons. In addition to the readings, requirements will include brief informal writing assignments/quizzes, two formal papers of 8 pages each, and two exams.
L357 25255 TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY
Maurice Manning
11:15a-12:30p TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
A curious fact about modern American poetry is many poets of the period also wrote manifestoes, essays, and other belletristic gambols which served to defend the “project” of modern poetry. In short, the period of 1912-1960 (give or take a few years) saw the emergence of the poet-critic, and important literary essays and forays by the likes of Pound, Eliot, Stein, Williams, and Jarrell helped define American poetry of the period. This has been a mixed blessing. Certainly, many of these literary stump speeches are engaging, elegant, and important; others, however, are rather self-serving, authoritarian, and exclusive. Over time, the influence of the poet-critics has largely prevailed and it is, curiously, their poetry that has constituted what we think of as modern American poetry. What about the likes of Vachal Lindsay, Martin Feinstein, Sara Teasdale, Lola Ridge, Langston Hughes, or Stephen Vincent Benet? These poets were publishing their poems in Poetry, The Nation, and The Dial, alongside poems by their now better-known peers, Eliot, Stevens, H.D., Frost, and Williams.
In this course we will read the key essays by the poet-critics. We will also read a LOT of poetry in order to broaden our understanding of the actual contents of modern American poetry as it unfolded. To that end, we will spend a fair amount of time in the library (not to be confused with the internet) perusing old issues of Poetry and The Nation, among other magazines, to re-discover the poems and the voices which have since faded into obscurity and to determine whether such obscurity is justified. What poem immediately precedes The Waste Land in the 1922 issue of The Dial in which that poem first appeared (sans footnotes, by the way)? Why hasn’t that preceding poem survived? Should it be reconsidered? These are the kinds of questions you’ll be asked to discuss in two medium-length papers (8-10 pages). You’ll also write a long, final paper (15-20 pages). Our primary text will be American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Vol. 1: Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker (Library of America; Hass, Hollander, Kizer, Mackey, and Perloff, editors). Class will consist of lectures, discussion, library visits, and close readings of the poems.
L359 28194 AMERICAN LITERATURE 1960-PRESENT
Denise Cruz
9:30a-10:45a TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H
.L363 25256 AMERICAN DRAMA
Shane Vogel
2:30p-3:45p TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
TOPIC: “Performance and American Modernity, 1850-1950”
This course will explore how performance shaped and responded to the development of an American modernity in the one hundred years between 1850 and 1950. In addition to studying dramatic texts and attending to the theatrical history of the time, we will also look closely at performance traditions such as minstrelsy and melodrama; vaudeville and burlesque; concert saloons, cabaret, and nightlife performances; Tin Pan Alley, blues, and jazz; expressionism and primitivism. By looking at this diverse range of material, we will develop an archive of performances through which to consider how modern American identities and relations have been represented, elaborated, challenged, and (mis)recognized on the American stage. Some questions that will guide our inquiry throughout the semester include: How has performance responded to the rapid and sometimes violent changes that define modern life? How have performers and playwrights, audiences and actors, sought to act as subjects rather than objects of these changes? How are social relations imagined and reimagined on the American stage? How did performers, writers, and directors use theatrical innovation and experimentation to address and redress the conditions of social relations under modernity? As these questions suggest, this course will ultimately address how performance—as a subject and a mode of scholarly inquiry—challenges and extends traditional archives of American modernity.
We will read plays by Eugene O’Neill, Susan Glaspell, Sophie Treadwell, Tennessee Williams, Elmer Rice, George Aiken, Dion Boucicault, and Georgia Douglas Johnson, as well as primary and secondary materials about American performance culture. Students will be expected to complete one short midterm paper and one longer final paper (which will involve some research), as well as weekly attendance, active participation, and informal assignments throughout the semester.
L367 14378 LITERATURE OF THE BIBLE
Nick Williams
1:25p-2:15p MWF (30 students) 3 cr., A&H.
The Bible has long been recognized as the most important source of Western literary tradition, the “Great Code of Art,” as William Blake called it. But until fairly recently, little attention has been paid to the literary qualities of the Bible’s own stories, poems, proverbs, etc. This course is intended as both an introduction to the critical movement which studies “the Bible as Literature” (and thus features some critical reading drawn from that movement) and an opportunity to think and talk about the literary aspects of this important book, a book which I hope will emerge as altogether more unusual, stranger, than we might initially think. In addition, during one week we’ll consider the ways that more conventionally “literary” texts transform biblical accounts, by reading David Maine’s Fallen, a retelling of the story of the fall and of Cain and Abel. Assignments will include 2 interpretive essays, some smaller writing assignments, a mid-term and a final. Warning: The instructor of this course assumes no doctrinal perspective on the Bible or its status as the inerrant word of God. Questions of faith and religion are not part of an understanding of the Bible as a work of literature. Both believers and non-believers in the Bible’s holiness are welcome in the class, but students who cannot discuss or think about biblical texts apart from their status as sacred truth should not take a course such as this one.
L369 7258 STUDIES IN BRITISH AND AMERICAN AUTHORS
Stephen Watt
1:25p-2:15p MWF (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
TOPIC: “Joyce and Re: Joyce”
This section of English L369 will focus on the writings of James Joyce, particularly his short story collection Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and his monumental modernist novel, Ulysses. It should be observed that, at first glance, Ulysses would seem a formidable novel—and a second glance will confirm that it is! But this course will spend nearly half a semester reading it in a careful, thoughtful way with the aim of providing students with the confidence to tackle a book of this length and complexity. To do so and in addition to some twenty class periods devoted to the book, we will make use of such supplemental texts as Stuart Gilbert’s James Joyce’s Ulysses and Don Gifford’s Ulysses Annotated. Short paper assignments will focus on specific episodes of the novel.
The last quarter of the course—the “Re: Joyce” section--will discuss writers influenced in one way or the other by Joyce, including Samuel Beckett (More Pricks Than Kicks), Tom Stoppard (Travesties), and Paul Muldoon (selected poems and To Ireland, I). The course will have several exams on the reading and 2-3 essays.
L371 7259 CRITICAL PRACTICES
Joshua Kates
11:15a-12:30p TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
PREREQUISITE: L202 with grade of C- or better. NOTE: The English Department will strictly enforce this prerequisite. Students who have not completed L202 with a grade of C- or better will have their registration administratively cancelled.
This course will focus on two sorts of questions: 1) how can literature be evaluated, some works judged to be better than others (if this is possible at all)?; and 2) how is it to be interpreted? Both of these practices, especially the former, have come into significant doubt of late. Starting with one or two of the more “classic” earlier treatments of these themes (David Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste,” Plato’s “Ion”), we will focus on the twentieth century and explore how these questions have been answered (including arguments made that they cannot be), written predominantly in the English language.
Thorough and timely preparation of the assigned readings is a must. You will not be able to perform well on the exams or write the papers without having done the readings and attended class discussions. (The assignments will be short, but not easy.) There will be four exams and two papers, as well as possibly some other brief written assignments. Because of the demands and difficulties of the course, the instructor of this particular section strongly recommends that any students who is not an actual English major contact him before signing up for this section ( jkates@indiana.edu).
L371 7260 CRITICAL PRACTICES
Jonathan Elmer
2:30p-3:45p TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
PREREQUISITE: L202 with grade of C- or better. NOTE: The English Department will strictly enforce this prerequisite. Students who have not completed L202 with a grade of C- or better will have their registration administratively cancelled.
This class is designed to acquaint students with the conceptual and historical roots of contemporary critical practice in literary and cultural studies. We will take an eclectic approach, reading a wide variety of criticism and theory. While you will gain a good sense of the intellectual history of contemporary critical methods, our primary commitment will be to ask questions about the very meaning, value, and implications of various critical perceptions and aesthetic experiences. We will emphasize careful reading, engaged discussion, and focused writing. Our discussions of criticism and theory will sometimes be quite general, but more often we will have some literary of cultural text to which our critical questions will be addressed—poems, a novel or two, and probably a film. In order both to help you orient yourself in the readings, and to work steadily on improving critical perceptiveness and critical prose, there will be weekly short, focused writing notebooks. There will also be four papers, based on notebook answers.
L371 7261 CRITICAL PRACTICES
Rae Greiner
9:30a-10:45a TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
PREREQUISITE: L202 with grade of C- or better. NOTE: The English Department will strictly enforce this prerequisite. Students who have not completed L202 with a grade of C- or better will have their registration administratively cancelled.
TOPIC: “A Cerulean Sweater, and Other Theory Matters”
This course is designed to introduce English and Education majors to the “practice” of criticism: the analytic methods and critical techniques underwriting (what is, perhaps, literally) the discipline of literary study. The subtitle of this course, and especially the phrase “Theory Matters,” highlights our fundamental consensus that—whether or not its influence is always obvious—theory matters to us: in the books we read (and how we read them), the films we watch (and how we talk about them afterwards), the cultural practices in which we engage, the products available to us, and the political and ideological forces shaping our choices and desires. Like Anne Hathaway’s “lumpy blue sweater”—betraying little if any of its cultural and material production—the literary and cultural texts we will analyze have histories. They too have been “selected” and marketed in complex ways; they too manifest in other forms; they too represent the silences and gaps of other (perhaps unrecognizable) forms, and contain the (cerulean?) traces of precedent texts and acts. We will consider it axiomatic, then, not only that theory “matters”—it is relevant to us in and outside the classroom—but also that “theory matters” are implicitly material (not just intellectual) concerns. Whether we are reading a novel by Jane Austen, a cereal box, a movie poster, or a map, we will be considering the ways in which theory matters shape how we comprehend, interpret, and navigate those cultural products. Books include: The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (Leitch et al.); Critical Terms for Literary Study (Lentricchia and McLaughlin); Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Culler); Hamlet (Wm Shakespeare); Emma (Jane Austen); and screenings of Grey Gardens (1975), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), and select episodes of The Office (BBC) and Six Feet Under (HBO).
L371 7262 CRITICAL PRACTICES
Jennifer Fleissner
1:25p-2:15p MWF (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
PREREQUISITE: L202 with grade of C- or better. NOTE: The English Department will strictly enforce this prerequisite. Students who have not completed L202 with a grade of C- or better will have their registration administratively cancelled.
TOPIC: “Reading Minds”
This course will introduce students to diverse methods and debates in literary-critical interpretation through a focus on a handful of texts in which the main character can be read as presenting a psychological challenge to our understanding: Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, and Nella Larsen’s Quicksand. Alongside each of these texts, we will read a number of critical works that approach them from different vantage points, and students will learn how to “do readings” of the critical materials as well as of the literary texts. Because of the class’s focus, our main emphasis will be on debates between differing approaches to psychological interpretation (i.e., Freudian vs. Lacanian vs. neurological accounts), as well as on debates between psychologically oriented criticism and other critical modes that challenge its privileging of individual interiority (such as historicism, materialism, deconstruction, or formalism).
L378 25257 STUDIES IN WOMEN AND LITERATURE
Jennifer Fleissner
11:15a-12:05p MWF (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
TOPIC: “The American Female Bildungsroman, 1795-1955”
This course will chart the shifts in fictional portrayals of a young woman’s coming-of-age story from the early days of the U.S. republic through the mid-20th century. Through an exploration of these stories, students will also become familiar with key genres in American literary history, including the seduction novel, domestic fiction, romanticism, the slave narrative, realism, regionalism, naturalism, and modernism.
Authors studied may include the following: Susanna Rowson, Hannah Webster Foster, Elizabeth Stoddard, Harriet Wilson, Harriet Jacobs, Henry James, Stephen Crane, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Zitkala-Sa, Edith Wharton, Anzia Yezierska, Booth Tarkington, Edith Summers Kelley, Jessie Fauset, and Gwendolyn Brooks.
L381 14380 RECENT WRITING
Catherine Bowman
2:30p-3:45p TR (30 students) 3 cr., A&H.
TOPIC: “ Contemporary American Poetry”
We will read, explore, and immerse ourselves in the terrain of contemporary poetry with an emphasis on sound, performance, and the musics of the line. We will respond to the poems each week through various writing exercises such as imitations, diaries, poetry comics, letter writing, Oulipo, sound performances, dream-writing, rhetorical experiments, impressionistic essays, treatments, plays, digital portraits, and etymological treasure hunts. We will experiment with various traditional and non-traditional poetic forms as a way to converse and engage with the poems we read for the class. Throughout the semester we will look at American modern and post-modernist poetry and poetics as a way to think about the work of contemporary writers. We will also read some critical essays on sound, listening, recording and the voice. Each week a response paper will be required along with a series of creative experiments, imitations, and exercises based on the readings. No experience writing poetry required—the course is open to the beginner and the advanced. We will most likely read eight collections of contemporary poetry and several essays on poetry most often by poets. We will also listen to many sound and audio recordings.
L384 25258 STUDIES IN AMERICAN CULTURE
Ed Comentale
1:00p-2:15p TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
TOPIC: “ Music/Lyrics/Voice – Popular Music and Modern American Culture”
This course will explore American popular music, focusing specifically on songs and performances of the early to mid-twentieth century. We will trace the evolution of popular music – from ballads and broadsides to blues and country music and ultimately rockabilly and pop – as it responds to specific regional and cultural crisis. Our first set of questions will explore the very basic phenomenology of song. What is song? How does it exist in our world? What are its unique aesthetic qualities? What is the relationship between music and text? Music and performance? Another set of questions will address the specific qualities and values of popular song. What does it mean for a song to be popular? What is the relationship between a popular song and its cultural moment? How does popular song arise and respond to particular historical crises? Another, more material set of questions will link popular song to early twentieth-century culture and history. How does popular song address the often violent experiences of modernity? How does it respond to significant experiences of alienation and exploitation? How does it address changing regional audiences and the experience of migration? How does it evolve in relation to the growth of modern technology and the expansion of the consumer market? How do innovations in popular musical form reflect and respond to similarly radical innovations in other modern arts?
We will explore the music of both major and minor figures, including Charley Patton, Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Mamie Smith, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, Fiddlin’ John Carson, Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, Woody Guthrie, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, etc. We will read work by musicologists, music historians, cultural historians, and critical theorists: Greil Marcus, Nick Tosches, Peter Guralnick, Simon Frith, David Brackett, Theodor Adorno, Roland Barthes, Brian Massumi, Charles Altieri, Susan Sontag.
Students will be required to keep up with a heavy listening and a heavy reading load, and they will be responsible for one in-class report and two long research papers. This is an upper-division, discussion-based course, so both attendance and participation are also mandatory.
Students are not required to have prior training in music or music history, but any knowledge of these subjects would certainly be helpful.
L390 CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
Andrew Miller
Lecture:
7264 – 2:30p-3:20p MW (150 students) 3 cr. A&H.
Discussion:
11572 – 11:15a-12:05p F (25 students)
11575 – 11:15a-12:05p F (25 students)
7266 – 12:20p-1:10p F (25 students)
11574 – 12:20p-1:10p F (25 students)
7265 – 1:25p-2:15p F (25 students)
11573 – 1:25p-2:15p F (25 students)
As newly human creatures, odd, small, and for a long time speechless, children have persistently, naggingly pressed writers to investigate the nature of human. How exactly do humans differ from animals? From things? What is more unsettling, a speaking pig or a speaking object (like a toy)? Why? Is there anything particularly human about the way “we” grow and develop? Is everything that looks like a human truly a human? How can we know? How can all the creatures we call human be human when they come in so many colors and shapes and sizes? Why is literature for children so often about marriage, violence and death?
In addressing these questions—both simple and fundamental—we are likely to begin with some writing by philosophers who have found children of special interest. But most of our time (don’t worry!) will be spent reading literature for young children and watching some films. The course will probably be organized thematically, with sections on children and animals; children and toys; children, violence, and death; children, sexuality, and marriage; and children and comedy. I’m determined to have us watch at least one of the Toy Story movies (and study their terrific soundtracks) and would like to have us watch Beauty and the Beast (the Cocteau version, but maybe Disney as well). We’re also likely to read some of the following: Peter Pan, From Slave Ship to Freedom Road, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Little House on the Prairie, Charlotte’s Web, The Birchbark House, Alice in Wonderland, poems by Edward Lear, Christina Rosetti, and William Blake, along with a few fairy tales. Students will be asked to write two papers and exams and to take regular quizzes. Of course the class will only be successful for you if you attend lecture and participate vigorously in discussion. We will meet twice a week for lecture and once for discussion; movies will be screened (but not often) in the evening.
This is not a course about teaching literature to children; but it is a course in why children’s literature is so powerful and why, therefore, we do teach it to children.
L391 15384 LITERATURE FOR YOUNG ADULTS
Romayne Rubinas Dorsey
9:30a-10:45a TR (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.
L391 is an upper division English Literature course designed to introduce adult readers to young adult literature, literature often written for and read by people between 12 and 18 years old. We will read ten to twelve texts from various genres as well supplementary materials, and students will read two additional texts from a selected list for the research paper. As we read this material we will formulate our own definition of young adult literature. Topics we will explore will revolve around the role of literacy and the imagination in adolescent life and development, and will include notions of adolescence and young adulthood; the role of imagination and fantasy in the lives of adolescents and their relationship to literacy both textual and cultural; what it means to be literate in a free society and forms of censorship; and issues of representation concerning age, class, gender, race and sexuality. There will be two course papers, a presentation, weekly discussion prompts, and two course exams on the readings.
L396 25260 AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
DeWitt Kilgore
11:15a-12:05p MWF (30 students) 3 cr. A&H. CSA.
TOPIC: “Grey Images: African American Writing and American Cinema”
During the past century the success of an author or book may be gauged by successful adaptation into film. While this process is no indication of a particular work’s artistic value it does expand its potential reach and impact. Cinematic translation also (for better or worse) cues an audience on how particular novel or story might be read or understood. This raises a striking – and by no means easy – question. Does cinematic interpretation enhance or degrade the impact of a literary artifact? Does literary authorization for a film distract attention from what is possible in cinematic narrative? What happens when a film has successfully supplanted its source as a powerful articulator of a set of ideas or emotional structures? What judgments can we make about the potential and effect of a work that exists in two different media?
This course takes on these issues within the context of recent African American writing and its translation onto America’s motion picture screens. We will pay particular attention to the traffic between word and image, silence and sound that occurs when black life and thought becomes art. The course will likely include the work of writers like Toni Morrison, Walter Moseley, Lorraine Hansberry, Chester Himes and associated films. Filmmakers such as Spike Lee, Gordon Parks, the Hughes Brothers and Julie Dash will provide the cinematic context in which African American writing exists.
This course requires two papers (3-5 typewritten pages, double-spaced), two exams, one research team project, active and informed classroom participation and attendance. Regular group screenings will be held outside of the regular class time. These screenings are a required part of the course; attendance is mandatory. Please check the published course schedule before you register.
Y398 7452 PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE IN ENGLISH
Paul Gutjahr
ARR 1-6 cr.
This course provides academic credit for a supervised, career-related work experience in a cooperating institution, agency, or business. Evaluation is made by the employer and the English Department. Credits do not count toward distribution or English requirements. S/F grading. For details students should consult either the Director of Undergraduate Studies (Ballantine 442A) or the Undergraduate Academic Advisor (Ballantine 442B).
L399 7267 JUNIOR HONORS SEMINAR
Karma Lochrie
2:30p-3:45p TR (15 students) IW.
PREREQUISITE: APPROVAL OF DEPARTMENT’S HONORS DIRECTOR.
TOPIC: “The Utopian”
Utopianism as Thomas More imagined it is dead, according to Russell Jacoby, in a postmodern age “sapped of the utopian impulse.” What does it mean to live in a post-utopian world? This course will begin with this dilemma as a way of considering what utopianism as a concept means and how utopia as a genre of literature works. Most genealogies of utopia begin with Thomas More in 1516, since he coined the term and wrote the first work of that name, but this course will look beyond More back to medieval ways of imagining ideal communities. It will include works by Plato, William Langland, Thomas More, Margaret Cavendish, Edward Bellamy, William Morris, and Octavia Butler. In addition to the literary texts, the course will make use of the philosophical tradition surrounding utopia from Bloch to more recent philosophical discussions of cosmopolitanism. The seminar will rely on lively student attendance and discussion. Written requirements for the course will include several short papers and one longer research project of the student’s choosing.
L495 7268 INDIVIDUAL READING IN ENGLISH
Paul Gutjahr
ARR 1-3 cr.
Permission of the instructor and Director of Undergraduate Studies required. Obtain authorization from BH 442.
Under the aegis of this course, a student arranges with a faculty member for a tutorial on a literary subject, author, or group of authors. Ordinarily, teachers are most willing to conduct an independent reading project with a student whom they know from a previous course, and on a topic within their field of expertise. If a student has a project in mind, but no idea about appropriate teachers, she or he can ask the Director of Undergraduate Studies (BH 442A) to recommend names of possible directors.
In undertaking L495, the student and teacher ordinarily agree on a sequence of readings, on a schedule of meetings, and on written assignments. This agreement must be written down on a form available from the Undergraduate Secretary in the English Department (BH 442) and returned BEFORE authorization to enroll in the course can be granted.
L498 7269 INTERNSHIP IN ENGLISH
Paul Gutjahr
ARR 1-3 cr.
PREREQUISITE: Major standing and 12 credits of English at 200-level or above including L202.
Permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies.
Supervised experience in teaching undergraduate English course or in editing departmentally based journal or allied publication. May be repeated once for a maximum of 6 credit hours; only 3 credit hours may count toward the major.
L499 13133 SENIOR INDEPENDENT STUDY FOR HONORS
Ed Comentale
ARR 2 cr.
Above section requires approval from the Director of English Honors, Ed Comentale ecomenta@indiana.edu.
Obtain Authorization from BH 442.
G302 11975 STRUCTURE OF MODERN ENGLISH
Robert Fulk
2:30p-3:45p TR (30 students) 3 cr.
The aim of the course is to examine methods of linguistic analysis and issues of language usage that have the most consequence in daily life, along with those methods and issues that are most useful for teachers of English and other well-educated individuals to be familiar with. Thus there will be some attention to alternative ways of analyzing the sounds, syntax, pragmatics, vocabulary, and morphology of English, but the particular focus of the course will be on social and regional varieties of English and the issues that language variation raise for Americans in general and teachers in particular. There will also be some attention to patterns in children’s acquisition of language and in language change, entailing some study of the history of the English language. There will be four examinations and a small project affording the opportunity to apply linguistic knowledge (to a pedagogical situation, if so desired). Required texts:
Pinker, The Language Instinct,
Hudson, Essential Introductory Linguistics
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