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Undergraduate Course DescriptionsCurrent upper-level English courses are described below. For descriptions of all English courses, refer to the Undergraduate Catalog. Spring 2008Special Topics Creative Writing
Linguistics and TESOL
Literature
Rhetoric and Composition Senior Seminars SPECIAL TOPICSEnglish 400: Special Topics in Creative WritingProf. Barbara Bogue Race, Religion, and Profanity in Fiction: Ethics and CraftStudents will study selected stories from the collections listed below; compare and contrast techniques of the craft of fiction with particular emphasis on characterization (character revealed through physical description, dialogue, thoughts, actions and sense of place), point-of-view and psychic distance, and theme/idea/concepts revealed in each story. Class discussions will center on “mystery” in the published stories: religious mystery, suspenseful mystery, and structural mystery rendered through language, characterization, and situations. Students will free-write in class and create outside of class short stories that incorporate the aforementioned techniques. These stories will be submitted for full-class workshops. Students will also contribute to in-class discussions and write reflective essays on how Burke and O’Connor incorporate their Catholic religion, regional settings and personalities, and socio-economic and historical matters in their fiction. Required textbooks: Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find and Mystery and Manners and James Lee Burke’s Jesus Out to Sea (as well as handouts of Burke’s essays on craft). English 400: Narrative and the Living History MuseumProf. Kecia Driver Mcbride Join us to take the history and the characters from 1836 and 1886 and create experiences for museum visitors which will enable them to understand the history, the social reality, the political turmoil of the times, and the effect of all of these on individual characters. We’ll be working in multidisciplinary teams with staff from Conner Prairie to analyze the discourse of the times and build upon historical research. We’ll create new work for implementation on the grounds of Conner Prairie during the 2008 season, including new scripts, storyboards, monologues, theater pieces, and chautauquas. Learn more >> CREATIVE WRITINGEnglish 307: Fiction Writing 2Prof. Sean Aden Lovelace Writing is an art and craft, creative inspiration blended with very hard work. In this class, we will focus on the work—reading, writing, discussing fiction, both professional examples, and our own personal writing. The goal is to develop technical ability and understanding of craft and technique; and to define and cultivate a personal aesthetic—or, at least, do some serious thinking about it. A portion of the class will concentrate on the development of a critical vocabulary, in-class writing exercises, and the discussion of pieces of short fiction. Obviously, fiction is a massive “world,” and we will analyze the usual and expected aspects: plot, setting, character, and so on. However, I would like to focus on objects in fiction (as in what is there and why?), figurative language (metaphors, similes, personification, etc.), conflict (locating it and why it’s important), and mood, or atmosphere. Be sure to think about these specific aspects with every fiction piece we read. Another portion of the class will be dedicated to workshop, or peer review, of your own original fiction (knowing this, you shouldn’t submit any work that you aren’t comfortable sharing with the class). Every student is expected to thoroughly read their peers’ work, and to give thoughtful and respectful feedback. Although focusing on workshopping student stories at this time, we will continue with exercises and our discussions of published fiction as well. Text: Flash Flash Fiction Forward: 80 Very Short Stories by James Thomas and Robert Shapard. We will also have handouts and stories on reserve, and/or Blackboard. Contact Professor Lovelace (salovelace@bsu.edu) with any questions. English 406: Creative Nonfiction 3Prof. Sean Aden Lovelace This is an advanced writing workshop that will focus on several aspects of creative nonfiction. The only way I know to improve in writing is to practice—both writing and reading. We will read voraciously. We will write the same. One of my interests is structure, so we will always be aware of the scaffoldings of texts, in our reading and writing. What is the best structural technique for telling a true story? Of telling your true story? And why? Three of several questions we will explore in this class. Another focus is the creation of immediacy (within image, scene, and so on) on the page, and the ability to reflect upon these vivid narratives. Over the course of the semester, you will write three short nonfiction pieces (3 pp), and a final long revision (10-12 pp). Other requirements will include: activities and short writing exercises, reading responses, workshop critiques, and a class “Book Club” presentation. Required Texts: In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction by Kitchen and Jones. The Next American Essay by D’Agata. You will also read one additional CNF text for the Book Club. I may also hand out several individual essays. Contact Professor Lovelace (salovelace@bsu.edu) with any questions. English 407: Fiction Writing 3Prof. Sean Aden Lovelace In this class we will continue many of the concepts of English 307, with an expectation of advanced complexity. The class will focus on student manuscripts in the genre of short fiction. We will give critical feedback on these student texts. We will underscore the necessity of careful and considered revision. Writing is an art and craft, creative inspiration blended with very hard work. In this class, we will focus on the work—reading, writing, discussing fiction, both professional examples and our own personal writing. We will continue our examination of craft and technique. The majority of the class will be dedicated to workshop, or peer review, of your own original fiction (knowing this, you shouldn’t submit any work that you aren’t comfortable sharing with the class). Every student is expected to thoroughly read their peers’ work, and to give thoughtful and respectful feedback (including, typed feedback to writer and instructor, written comments on the actual text, and verbal comments during the class meeting). Readings will include Telling Stories edited by Joyce Carol Oates, along with handouts and stories on reserve and/or Blackboard. Contact Professor Lovelace (salovelace@bsu.edu) with any questions. English 408: Poetry Writing 3Prof. Mark Neely About half the class will be devoted to discussion of readings, including various essays on poetics, and six collections of poems by contemporary poets. We will talk about how the authors attempt to unify these collections, and look closely at the dazzling number of formal choices poets make in their work. Groups of students will present each book to the class, and help focus discussion on relevant questions. The readings will help inspire the poems written for the class, inform the way we discuss student work, and offer strategies for revision. Assignments include one poem per week, presentations, readings and reading responses. At the end of the semester students will turn in a chapbook of poems and an essay on prosody. Possible texts include: Maurice Manning, Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions; Tracy K. Smith, Duende; Agha Shahid Ali, The Country Without a Post Office; Troy Jollimore, Tom Thompson in Purgatory; Anna Swir, Talking to my Body; and Sharon Olds, The Gold Cell. Contact Professor Neely with questions at maneely@bsu.edu. English 409: Creative Writing in the CommunityBarbara Bogue This course is designed for writers to practice the techniques of characterization, point-of-view, setting, & conflict so that in any genre or form, language takes on new meaning, intensity, and originality. Students will work with participating social services agencies (Big Brothers Big Sisters, Heritage Retirement Village, Hillcroft Services, Inc., Motivate Our Minds and VSA arts of Indiana), meeting at least five times with a partner from one of these agencies in order to develop a broader perspective of the complex ways through which individuals cope with their situations and environments. Through the student’s assistance, an often-unheard voice will shape a story that will be read and heard. Storytelling involves all of the techniques of fiction writing mentioned above and also applies to poetry and creative nonfiction. This immersive experience offers the opportunity for the students to learn about themselves through others and to become more productive citizens of the local and academic communities. LINGUISTICS AND TESOLEnglish 320: Introduction to Linguistic ScienceProf. Lynne Stallings The aim of this linguistics course is to raise your awareness of the complex organization and systematic nature of language, the primary means of human communication. In a sense, you will be studying yourself since you are a prime example of a language user. Most of your knowledge of language, however, is unconscious, and the part of language that you can describe is largely the result of your earlier education, which may have provided you with confusing or misleading notions about language. This course is intended to clarify your ideas about language and bring you to a better understanding of its nature by introducing you to the basic principles of linguistic science and the major areas of the field, including, but not limited to, phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. This is not a course about just one particular language, but about human language in all its aspects. Some of the data to be analyzed will come from languages with which students are familiar, but students will also work with data from languages with which they have no prior familiarity. English 323: Discourse Structure and StrategiesProf Mary Theresa Seig Join us to take the history and the characters from 1836 and 1886 and create experiences for museum visitors which will enable them to understand the history, the social reality, the political turmoil of the times, and the effect of all of these on individual characters. We’ll be working in multidisciplinary teams with staff from Conner Prairie to analyze the discourse of the times and build upon historical research. We’ll create new work for implementation on the grounds of Conner Prairie during the 2008 season, including new scripts, storyboards, monologues, theater pieces, and chautauquas. Learn more >> English 328: Language and GenderProf. Carolyn MacKay Do men and women talk differently? How and why? What are the implications of differences in language use on social relations? How can we research these questions? This course is designed to provide a detailed examination of the relationship between language and gender. Because language use is one of the most important factors influencing our judgments about others, it is important to understand how biological sex and gender roles are involved in those judgments. We will describe and analyze differences in the way that men and women use language (including differences in pronunciation, word choice, grammar, conversational norms, and narrative styles). In addition we will look at cross-cultural studies of language and gender and the patterns of language socialization of girls and boys. Western European assumptions about language use will be assessed in light of this cross-cultural evidence. This course will use the methods and analyses taken from linguistics, anthropology and psychology in an effort to describe and explain the nature of gender differentiation in speech. We will focus not only on what researchers have hypothesized about these differences, but also on what original research by the students can add to the discussion. English 438: TESOL Curriculum Development and AssessmentProf. Lynne Stallings The purpose of this course is for students to learn how to 1) effectively develop courses and create materials for English Language Learners and 2) assess learner progress in the classroom. Specifically, students will learn about developing courses and/or materials to meet the specific needs of English Language Learners at various levels of proficiency, implementing what they have learned with English Language Learners during an immersive learning experience with the Muncie Community Schools. In addition, students will learn about informal classroom assessments, as well as formal assessments, such as NCLB and Indiana state standards. LITERATURE AND FILMEnglish 363: Renaissance and Seventeenth-Century StudiesProf. Will Stockton Origins and OriginalityWe commonly use the term “original” to describe something new – for instance, something “unattempted yet in prose or rhyme,” as Milton says of Paradise Lost. Yet the value of originality in the Renaissance often resides less in newness than in the return to origins: hence Milton’s highly original poem narrates the Biblical origins of all things existing. In this class, we will survey the literature of the English Renaissance with an eye to such Janus-faced perspectives on origins and originality. Beginning with a study of the humanist renaissance of antiquity in the sixteenth-century present, we will consider how period concerns with origins play out in political theories of the state (Sir Thomas More, Edmund Spenser, Thomas Hobbes), natural science and philosophy (Francis Bacon, Margaret Cavendish, and John Donne), the writing of history (Thomas Nashe and William Shakespeare), and Christian theology (Christopher Marlowe and John Milton). Throughout the course, we will also reflect on the commonplace situation of the Renaissance at the origin of modernity: that is, the sense in the Renaissance constitutes an “early modern” period. Course requirements include three short papers and a final exam. English 365: Nineteenth-Century British LiteratureProf. Joyce Huff From Factory to Wonderland, Drawing Room to Haunted Mansion: The Fantastical and the Ordinary in Nineteenth-Century LiteratureWhen you think of nineteenth-century British literature, what comes to mind? Is it chilling tales of horror, fantastical voyages to imaginary worlds, and romantic poems about the bygone days of knights and princesses? Or is it socially conscious novels about the working conditions of the poor, cozy tales of tea parties and balls, and semi-autobiographical depictions of realistic human trials and triumphs? The nineteenth century saw a profusion of literary styles and genres evolve, and with them, debates over what should be the proper subject for literature. Works of science fiction, fantasy and historical romance shared popularity with realistic works of social criticism, tales of courtship and the marriage market, and memoir-like novels of development (Bildungsroman). In this course, we will examine the differing ways in which works of fantasy and works of realism addressed the social and cultural issues that were important to the people living in nineteenth-century Britain. Some possible texts for study in this course include: Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, short horror fiction by writers such as Oscar Wilde, Sheridan LeFanu and Rudyard Kipling, and poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christina Rossetti and John Keats. Course requirements will include two papers, exams, presentations and participation in discussion, both in class and on-line. English 422: Authors: Ernest HemingwayProf. Rai Peterson Ernest Hemingway: Men's Men and Men's WomenFocused study of literary works by Ernest Hemingway and some reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald as well, with attention to biographical, historical, political, and literary contexts. Course requirements: read 5 novels and one biography. English 496: Literary and Critical TheoryProf. Debbie Mix We all use it, even if we don’t have names for it. We all engage with the questions it asks—what should we read? how should we read? why does it matter?—in one way or another. Literary and critical theory can be fascinating, daunting, illuminating, and frustrating, sometimes all at once. Whatever you think of it—love it, hate it, find it utterly mystifying—you can’t be an English major without it. If you’re thinking of going to graduate school, this course will be especially useful, but all students can benefit from the opportunity to name and claim her or his unique critical perspective. This course is designed to help you deepen your engagement with literary and critical theory. We’ll concentrate on major movements that characterize contemporary literary criticism: New Criticism, Marxism, Poststructuralism, Feminism and Gender Theory, Psychoanalysis, and Cultural Studies. We’ll use a general overview textbook as well as selected essays by theorists themselves. And we’ll work on applying these theories to specific texts (probably Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry, Shakespeare’s King Lear, and/or episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as well as to the text of each student’s choice). Assignments will include regular response papers and a critical manifesto. RHETORIC AND COMPOSITIONEnglish 335: Public DiscourseProf. Paul Ranieri Draws on different rhetorical perspectives to read, analyze, and produce public discourse in diverse media for a variety of audiences and purposes. Prerequisite: ENG 210 for English majors. Texts:
English 435: Tutoring WritingProf Jackie Grutsch Mckinney This is a class for learning to respond to writing. It is for students interested in working in a tutoring environment (like The Writing Center) and for future teachers, editors, and writers who will be called upon to assess the writing of others in their careers. All will find this class both practical and intellectually stimulating. In addition to studying composition pedagogy, students will become better writers as they engage in the peer response process and explore techniques for improving organization, structure, development, style, format, and usage. SENIOR SEMINARSEnglish 444-1: Senior SeminarFrank Felsenstein Remembering the HolocaustThrough the employment of memoirs and other literary texts, the senior seminar will explore why and how the Holocaust has come to be seen by many people as arguably the single most consequential and defining event of the twentieth century. More than sixty years after, should the Holocaust still have relevance to those reaching adulthood shortly after the advent of the new Millennium? When the remnant of those who witnessed it are no more, will there be an obligation to preserve and make iconic the memory of such an unspeakable crime against humanity? What, if anything, should we remember? What should be learned? Is it not best to forget -- and forgive? The seminar will investigate the disparity between the comparative silence in the years immediately after the Second World War and the cultural promotion of the atrocities and sufferings of the Nazi era in recent times (called by some the “Americanization of the Holocaust”). It will also examine the question of “authenticating” the trauma of the Holocaust, and why there are some who describe themselves as second or third generation survivors. We shall try to consider the continuing influence of the Holocaust on religious belief (where was God?), on education (should teaching the Holocaust and Genocide studies be mandated in schools?), on Jewish and Christian relations, and more broadly, on the cultural imagination. Particular aspects that will be given prominence are the documentation of the Holocaust by witnesses through letters, diaries, and memoirs, and its literary and cinematic representations. Although this does not purport to be a sequential study of the history of the Nazi era, students will be encouraged to keep a course journal in which they should chart the progression of their thinking about the Holocaust and its significance. In considering whether you wish to enroll, please note that, in more than one sense, this will be a highly INTENSIVE seminar. English 444-2: Senior SeminarProf. Joyce Huff Enabling Discourses: Representing Disability in Literature and CultureI am not one of the physically challenged – These are the opening lines from a poem by Cheryl Marie Wade, one of the leaders of the disability culture movement. Wade is one of the many writers, scholars and activists who are currently redefining what it means to be disabled in American culture today. Writers and philosophers have long been fascinated by people whose bodies and minds differ from the norm. However, it is only in the past decade or so that scholars have begun to think about disability as a human rights issue and to apply new ways of thinking critically about literature and identity to representations of disability. In this course, we will take a look at past depictions of disability and examine the ways in which individuals with disabilities are currently challenging older models for understanding physical and mental difference and creating new identities for themselves. Among the issues we may discuss are: literary texts, freak shows, disability rights, fat and body image, madness, Deaf culture, eugenics, AIDS, murderball, and the works of contemporary writers, artists and performers with disabilities. Some possible texts for study in this course include: memoirs, such as Susannah Kaysen’s Girl Interrupted, Alice Walker’s “Beauty,” and Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals; literary works, such as Wade’s poems, The Elephant Man and Children of a Lesser God; films, such as Freaks, Murderball, and Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back; and readings in cultural studies and literary theory. Course requirements will include a short paper, a seminar paper, reading quizzes, presentations and participation in discussion, both in class and on-line. English 491: Literature of African-American TraditionsProf. Robert Nowatzki This course examines African-American literature from the earliest works through the late twentieth century. We will read a variety of literary forms—poetry, fiction, autobiography, speeches, essays, and plays. In reading this literature, we will focus on the connections between these texts, as well as the uniqueness of each text and how it is shaped by its historical, cultural, biographical, and literary contexts. Some of the common themes will be the links between race, nationality, and identity; the emphasis on “voice” and vernacular expression; W. E. B. Du Bois’ notion of “double-consciousness”; and the formation and revision of black literary traditions. Students will be required to turn in a 6-8 page research paper near the end of the semester, which will count for 25% of the final grade. In addition, students will be required to write and turn in a short, informal response (about 150-200 words) at the beginning of each class; these responses will count for 20% of your final grade. There will also be a midterm (20%) and a final exam (20%). Required texts: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man Toni Morrison, Sula, Gates and McKay, ed. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature 2nd ed. Some of the authors whose works we’ll read from the Norton anthology include: Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker
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