Evaluative criterion 1—Program quality Committee: Michael (chair)

Horror is one of the most popular and resilient genres in the history of film. But what defines a movie as a horror film? And what exactly is it that keeps us coming back for more? It's certainly more than the experience of being scared. In this course, we will watch and discuss a variety of classic and contemporary horror films with the goal of understanding the cinematic codes that define the genre. In particular, we will consider the ways in which issues of gender and sexuality are often central themes of the horror film. Why is that which is monstrous or scary in such films often relates to anxieties surrounding gender, sexuality, and difference? In addition to weekly screenings, students will read and discuss a variety of reviews, essays, and theoretical texts. Students will be expected to master the language of film analysis. Please note the extended time-frame of the class to allow for film screenings. Fulfills Film Studies concentration requirement.

Writing is not only a means to deliver social justice (e.g., through court rulings, laws). Writing processes themselves necessitate choices regarding social justice. Such decisions pertaining to authorship, ownership, and accessibility are made more visible by the use of digital writing technologies to produce, circulate, deliver, and receive texts. Understanding the consequences of these decisions for social justice is imperative as they affect how people make and communicate meaning in writing. Google’s contentious book digitization project, Napster’s brief but pronounced influence on file sharing policies, and Turnitin’s public legal battles regarding its database of student papers are just a few examples of digital text initiatives with implications for social justice. In this course we will discuss strategies for studying digital texts and technologies and their socio-political, educational, and economic consequences as well as for making socially just and ethical choices regarding whether and how to use these texts and technologies.

This course fulfills the University Core Theme Area Requirement in Social Justice. Fulfills Writing Studies Concentration requirement.
400W Playwriting Workshop II

Isenberg, R. (Spring 2011)

This class is designed for students who are serious about dramatic writing. Students will embark on longer and more sophisticated projects. The curriculum will focus on dramatic choices, character development and story arc. Students will continue to see local productions and read aloud. Semester may culminate in a public staged reading.

The required prerequisite for the course is ENG 301W, SPST: Playwriting I, a comparable course, or permission from the English Department. Fulfills a Writing Studies concentration requirement.
403W Authurian Literature

Beranek, B. (Spring 2007)

The legend of King Arthur is the most durable myth of the Middle Ages, and the only one that still has the power to spark significant new versions. This course is a study of the origins and the efflorescence of that myth.

1. to provide a historical survey of the myth from its origins in early Welsh poetry to Sir Thomas Malory's attempt to unify the various strands of the myth in the late fifteenth century, and its continuing vitality in modern literature and film.

2. to identify some of the differing uses to which the myth has been put: religious, psychological, and political

3. to study in more detail one element of the Arthurian tradition, Holy Grail, from its origins in the twelfth century to Richard Wagner's operatic treatment of it in the nineteenth century (through Hans-Jurgen Syberberg's 1982 film version), with attention to the medieval theological implications of the Grail legend and its recent vogue in film and popular fiction (Indiana Jones and The DaVinci Code.) This course satisfies the World Literature requirement for English Education students. (OLD MAJOR: Period Course)

This course surveys contemporary American and British women playwrights (1970-present) focusing on how plays by women have shaped current theatrical history, modes of performance, and feminist literary methodologies. We will read plays, see plays, and discuss plays with an emphasis on the relationship between text and performance. We will investigate issues of gender alongside questions of race, nationality, ethnicity, class, and sexuality. Playwrights may include Beth Henley, Marsha Norman, Caryl Churchill, Pamela Gien, Paula Vogel, Wendy Wasserstein, Adrienne Kennedy, Anna Deavere-Smith, Suzan Lori Parks, Irene Fornes, and Lisa Loomer. We will also do a selection of readings from contemporary performance theory including essays by Judith Butler, Jill Dolan, Sue Ellen Case, and Peggy Phelan. Assignments will include several response papers (2-3 pages), a short essay (6-8 pages), a presentation, and a final project/paper to be developed during the course of the semester. Fulfills 400-level Literature and Diversity requirement.

Beginning with the colonial period but focusing most heavily upon the 19th- and 20th-centuries, this course will consider the rich variation of poetry by women in America while exploring its social and historical contexts. The focus of our class will involve some of the following questions: how have women poets responded to roles assigned them, as women, at various points in history? how have women poets used poetry to assert a voice? how have women poets made use of poetry to express social or political concerns? how have women poets made use of language, form, and subject matter to suggest a gendered perspective, sensibility, or experience? how has poetry by women been critically regarded and why? what relationship might traditions of women's poetry have to canonical and predominately male traditions? how have women poets engaged questions of identity, voice, and poetic practice in relationship to race, class, and ethnicity?

The course is designed around discussion, and active participation is required. Through journals, oral reports, and written projects, you will have ample opportunity to explore and articulate ideas. The course is intended to encourage your interpretive skills in close reading, analytical thinking, and research. As well, a major course objective is to develop a foundation for thinking about traditions in women's poetry, issues of production and reception , and debates over poetics and politics related to social contexts. Fulfills either 400-level Literature and Diversity or 400-level American Literature requirement. (OLD MAJOR: Literature Across Boundaries)
403W Black Women Writers

Mollis, K. (Spring 2007)

This course will examine a diverse yet representative selection of novels written by African American women in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Throughout the semester, we will focus on the novels' attention to the complex intersections of gender and race and engagement with other socio-political concerns, including those related to subjectivity, education, labor, domesticity, sexuality, and violence. We will also explore how such concerns generate and/or inform experiments with novelistic conventions. While we will spend a considerable amount of time discussing differences among the novels, a primary objective of this course is to investigate thematic and formal traditions of African American women's fiction. Fulfills either 400-level Literature and Diversity or 400-level American Literature requirement. (OLD MAJOR: Literature Across Boundaries)

This course is designed as a workshop for advanced students in fiction writing, in which students will work to develop their imaginative writing and critical skills beyond the introductory level. Students taking this course must be committed to extensive writing, careful reading, active participation in class, and extremely regular attendance. Much of the class time will be spent discussing one another’s writing; as a workshop focused on writing as a process, substantial writing, revision, and group critique will be expected. In addition, students will be reading and discussing published fiction, since in learning to read well one learns much about writing. Pre-Requisite: ENGL 400W Fiction Workshop II. Fulfills a Writing concentration requirement (WT).

Work-shop (wurk’shop’) n. 1. An area, room, or establishment in which manual or industrial work is done. 2. A group of people who meet regularly for a seminar in a specialized field.

This course is a workshop for students interested in writing poetry who have already had significant experience in reading, writing, and discussing poetry. A workshop is a collective, requiring commitment to careful reading, extensive writing, active participation, and extremely regular attendance in class. Although a certain degree of talent helps, much good poetry writing is the product of labor and practice, both in the act of writing and the act of reading. You should strive this semester to become a meticulously careful reader, for in reading well you learn much about writing well. In addition, through reading the works of your classmates carefully and thoughtfully, you will contribute significantly to their improvement while also learning much about the craft of good writing. In this course, we will read several books by contemporary poets, explore a range of poetic forms, and experiment with language's potential. Students will write 1-2 poems per week, generate book reviews, develop a mid-term portfolio, and create a final chap-book. Work between literary genres and work with the as a form of poetic exploration will be encouraged. Pre-Requisite: ENGL 400W Poetry Workshop II. Fulfills a Writing concentration requirement (WT).
406W Medieval Drama

Brannen, A. (Fall 2009)

We have come, over the last 30 years especially, to understand that medieval drama was a highly evolved art form. For many decades, the main reason to study medieval drama was to discover again the brilliance of the English Renaissance, but now that we know more about the dramaturgy of the middle ages -- a dramaturgy vastly unlike our own -- we are beginning to understand the brilliance of the medieval English scripts which have survived.

This course will be a comparative study of major plays by Shakespeare and their adaptation into film. The emphasis will be on the role of the film director as a major interpreter of a play. Multiple film renditions of a play may be shown in order to highlight how interpretation of the text changes from one director to another, what factors greatly influence a director’s interpretation of Shakespeare, and why cinematic renditions of the plays, like scholarly commentary and theatrical productions, now constitute a significant third forum in which to engage Shakespeare. Six plays will be studied: Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Julius Caesar, Henry V.

Fulfills 400-level British Literature Requirement or Film Studies Requirement
410W 17th Century Lyric Poetry

St. Hilaire, D. (Spring 2011)

The British 17th century is 400 years and an ocean away from life in the American 21st century. But much of what we think of as “modern” ideas and conflicts—about politics, about faith, and about ourselves—has its roots in the turmoil of that distant moment in English history, so that, for several decades now, scholars have identified the 17th century as the birthplace of the “modern” period. Nowhere are these birth-pangs so keenly felt, nor so thoroughly explored, as in that century’s poetic tradition. In this class, we will be focusing specifically on lyric poetry of writers like John Donne, Ben Jonson, Mary Wroth, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Katherine Philips, and John Milton, in order to see both how these writers are distant from us and how their ideas are related to our own. Though we will keep the historical events of the period in mind, our primary focus will be on the poems themselves, as we explore how these works grapple with a broad variety of topics—love, nature, God, government, and, most importantly, what it means to be a self struggling with these ideas.

Fulfills the 400-level British requirement.
412W Renaissance Literature & Politics

Kurland, S. (Spring 2009)

The English Renaissance was not only the age of Shakespeare but the age of Queen Elizabeth I. In the 150 years that included Elizabeth’s reign, England experienced the Protestant Reformation, participated in pan-European religious and dynastic conflict (which saw the defeat of the Spanish Armada), established colonies in Ireland and America, endured the apocalyptic Gunpowder Plot, and stumbled into Civil War and the temporary abolition of the monarchy. The English Renaissance was the age of More, Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Marlowe, Spenser, Webster, and Milton, major authors whose work—like Shakespeare’s—selectively reflected and engaged in the politics of the age. This course is a survey of the intersections between literature and politics in the Renaissance. We will read literary works in various genres by such major figures as Sidney and Spenser along with other, non-literary, texts, including continental imports like Castiglione’s Courtier and Machiavelli’s Prince. Tentative readings will include More’s Utopia, lyric poetry by Wyatt and Surrey, selections from Arcadia and The Faerie Queene, and popular plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, along with selected modern literary and historical scholarship. Fulfills 400 level British Literature requirement.

In 1660 King Charles II re-opened the London theatres and ushered in a new era of theatrical creativity, talent, and innovation on the British Stage. In addition to the appearance of the first English actresses, female playwrights emerged as a leading force in the theatrical world. Throughout the century playwrights such as Aphra Behn, Susanna Centlivre, Mary Pix, Hannah Cowley, Elizabeth Inchbald, Frances Burney, and Joanna Baillie, to name just a few, enjoyed commercial and financial success. Through their work, these authors re-imagined issues of gender, politics, family, class, marriage, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, fashion, and motherhood. In this course we will read a variety of plays by women across the eighteenth-century, paying close attention to the cultural contexts in which they were written. Assignments will include several response papers, a short essay, presentations, and a final paper/project. Fulfills: 400-level British Literature requirement (LT), Literature & Diversity requirement (LT).

In this course we will 1) read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816) as literary texts, analyzing such things as Austen’s methods of characterization, treatment of place, narrative techniques, plotting, and the historical context of the novels; 2). study many of the film adaptations of these three novels, examining them cinematically, with attention to such basics as casting, lighting, and set design, but as well to the ways in which these films create their visual and emotional effects through special effects, camera motion, the positioning of characters within frames, and so on. While we will look at each medium individually, we will also of course explore how the films interpret the novels: while many of the film adaptations of Austen’s novels are viewed by critics as “heritage films,” or period pieces because they stay close to the novel upon which they are based, others move farther from the novel, perhaps emphasizing through visual images issues which in the novel readers have seen as secondary. How do we as readers and viewers respond to these choices? Do such adaptations as Patricia Rozema’s Mansfield Park, with its emphasis on the issue of slavery, or Gurinder Chadha’s Bride and Prejudice, which sets Austen’s plot in modern-day India and explores the cultural constraints on female expression there, or Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, an updated Emma, invigorate Austen’s novels, or somehow betray them? Or does the film adaptation of a novel simply add another “textual surface” that may be added to the mix of what it is we see the text of Pride and Prejudice, for instance, to be? A major focus of the class will be an exploration of how gender is treated in the novels and films, including such issues as the function of the male gaze; Austen’s depiction and subversion of the conventional feminine ideal; the representation and valuation of domesticity; anorexia and the cinematic representation of Austen’s heroines, etc.

This course will explore how travel narratives embody, incite, or repel English/British imperialistic endeavors from 1666-1832, and examine the role gender plays in the response to imperialistic advances. I define “narratives” as those fiction and non-fiction works of poetry, drama, and prose by English/British, American, and European writers, both male and female, that depict travel of various kinds–that of the tourist, the traveler, the scientist, the adventurer, the soldier, the captive, the companion–to various places, including the Indies, North America, Africa and Scotland. Texts (tentative list): –Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. Penguin, 2000. 0-14–43414-3. --Johnson, Samuel and James Boswell. “A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland” and “The Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides.” Penguin, 1984. $14.95. 0-14-043221-3. --Knight, Sarah. The Journal of Madam Knight. Applewood Books, 1998. $7.95. 1-55709-115-3. –Equiano, Olaudah, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself. Broadview Press, 2001. 1-55111-262-0. --Montagu, Mary Wortley. Turkish Embassy Letters. Virago, 1995. $14.99. 1-85381-679-5. --Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko. Ed. Joanna Lipking. Norton Critical Ed., 1997. 0-393-97014-0. --Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. Oxford UP. 0-19-283382-0. --Brooke, Frances. The History of Emily Montague. McClelland and Stewart. 0-7710-3457-1. –Rowlandson, Mary. A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. In Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives. Ed. Kathryn Z. Derounian-Stodola. Penguin, 1998. $13.95. 0-14-043671-5. Course Requirements: an oral presentation, midterm and final exams, and a course paper, as well as reading quizzes and brief position papers. For the literature track, this course fulfills 400-level British Literature requirement or 400-level Literature and Diversity.

This course provides a chronologically organized exploration of British verse produced during the Romantic period, that is to say, between 1789—the French Revolution’s first year—and 1832, when the Great Reform Bill inaugurated a new era in England. We shall read and discuss a variety of poems, longer and shorter alike, to elucidate what is aesthetically and ideologically revolutionary in the Romantics’ art and why Romanticism, for many scholars, is the principal avant-garde movement in British literary history. This course invites students to consider poetry by authors such as Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Ann Yearsley, William Blake, Mary Robinson, Helen Maria Williams, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Anne Bannerman, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Clare, Felicia Dorothea Hemans, John Keats, and Letitia Elizabeth Landon. Requirements include one shorter essay (5-7 pages), a longer researched essay (9-12 pages), a presentation (5-7 minutes), a mid-term examination, and a final examination.

Course Text: Wu, Duncan, ed. Romanticism: An Anthology. 3rd ed. Malden: Blackwell, 2007. Print. Fulfills 400 level British Literature requirement.
419W Jane Austen

Engel, L. (Fall 2010)

Although Jane Austen wrote six novels over two hundred years ago, she is still everywhere. From zombie novels to film adaptations, board games to action figures, Austen has reached an astonishing variety of audiences in many different capacities. Why has Austen remained so popular and what makes her novels so relevant to contemporary readers? In this course we will read almost all of Austen, all about Austen, and finally some works based on Austen. While reading Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion, we will pay close attention to the cultural contexts in which they were produced and also to the elusive figure of Austen herself. Readings will be paired with critical articles and film adaptations. We will end the course with a contemporary revision of Austen: The Three Weissmans Of Westport, Cathleen Schine's latest novel, which is based on Sense and Sensibility. Fulfills: 400-level British Literature requirement (LT), Literature & Diversity requirement (LT).

Despite its declining influence by the 1960s, modernism saw the production of innumerable works of great beauty and insight, and it remains important as a milestone in the progression of modern thought and expression. Combining common elements of naturalism, symbolism, and a growing obsession with the “primitive” and “authentic” expression, modernism also saw local variations in avant-garde centers from Munich and St. Petersburg to Paris and New York. We will explore the British branch of modernism (beginning just before the turn of the twentieth century) by examining key authors and some of the artistic trends and historical events that influenced them. Works by Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, and Denise Levertov will be featured among others. Fulfills 400 level British Literature requirement.

This course will be a reading The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion in the broader contexts of J.R.R. Tolkien's academic expertise in medieval English and Germanic literature. Tolkien's experience of heroism and horror in World War I, his resolute Catholicism, and the changing world of the 1930's will provide additional contexts for a fuller understanding of the his epic saga of Middle-earth. This course will also serve as an introduction to scholarly attention that has been bestowed on these broadly popular works. The course will also include opportunities to watch and discuss Peter Jackson's translation of Tolkien's narrative into film. Christopher Tolkien has published many volumes of his father’s drafts, and early, variant, and discarded versions; students will be encouraged to study the growth and development of myth in process. Fulfills: 400-level British Literature requirement (LT).