200-level courses
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208 - Topics in Global Literature
208-01 - C. Moraru
A required English course in the major also open to all undergraduates in sophomore standing, this Topics in Global Literature class examines how contemporary international fiction comes to terms with the increasing transnational mobility—chosen or imposed—of people, values, and cultural symbols, and the bearings of this process on human identity. Specifically, this section deals with representations of geocultural displacement, migration, and exile following certain traumatic events during the post-World War II era, when people become more and more aware of the broader world shaping—rooting, uprooting, and rerouting—individual lives.
Our course has a global focus twice. First, it has a cross-cultural, transnational, and, indeed, planetary scope, covering as it does a wide range of literary and cultural traditions, Western and non-Western, and spanning several continents. Second, the works discussed here are recent and speak to a growing feeling worldwide that we have entered the new age of “time-space compression,” “network society,” and the “global village,” in which peoples, cultures, and communities around the world are more interconnected and more fluid, but perhaps also more vulnerable than ever before. Our authors are Indian (Bengali) American (Bharati Mukherjee), Chinese American (Gish Jen), Korean American (Chang-rae Lee), French (Frédéric Beigbeder), Turkish (Orhan Pamuk), Turkish-Irish (Joseph O’Neill), and English (Ian McEwan). All readings—novels and short stories—are either in English or English translation.211 - British Authors: Medieval-Neoclassical
All 211 sections meet General Education Core Requirements
for Literature (GLT) and AULER/CLER (BL/CBL).
Requirement for English major. Pr. sophomore standing, or English major, or
permission of instructor.
211-01 TR 1400- J. Evans
You will study classic works of literature by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, and some of their contemporaries. Along with selections from The Canterbury Tales, Paradise Lost, and Gulliver’s Travels, you will read and discuss Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado about Nothing and his tragedy Othello, Behn’s short novel Oroonoko, and poetry by Spenser, Donne, and Pope. Our emphasis will be close reading of these works in their cultural contexts. Student writing will include several exams, each with a brief essay.
211-02 MWF 1000- A. Vines
This course is designed to introduce students to the major literary genres and authors in Britain. We will follow the development of the narrative, dramatic, and lyric genres from their beginnings in Anglo-Saxon England to the end of the 18th century. Emphasis will be placed on close readings and cultural, intellectual, and historical contexts.
212 - Major British Authors: Romantic to Modern
All 212 sections meet General Education Core Requirements for Literature (GLT) and AULER/CLER (BL/CBL). Requirement for English major. Pr. sophomore standing, or English major, or permission of instructor.
212- TR 930- B. Langenfeld
English 212 surveys writers in British literature from the Romantic, Victorian, and Modernist eras. Since we have but a few months to cover over two centuries of literature, we must select representative figures from these eras to help us understand key features of literary history since the late 1700s into the early twenty-first century.
The course format will include a mixture of lecture, class discussion, group work, movies, audio readings, and use of the course website.
Handouts: The handouts we use in class are available as PDFs on the website. You are responsible for your handouts; print and bring them to class. They are highlighted like this on the syllabus: √ PDF Handout
Attendance: Don't worry if on occasion you are late to class. However, do not leave class early. With a class this size, it's too disruptive. If you have to leave early, then you should not come to class. E-mail friends in your group and find out what you missed. I reserve the right to drop you from the course if you leave early.
More on attendance: I do not take role daily. You'll see why after the first week. I learn everyone's name and know who is present. Of course the most meaningful evidence of your attendance is your performance on the quizzes, group work, and exams. You miss classes and you will do poorly in English 212. That is a certainty. If you are repeatedly absent I will email you. If you continue to miss class I'll drop you from the course. Sorry to be so stern about all this but you need to have it up front.
Laptops & Cell Phones
You can use your laptop in class for taking notes or reading the texts that you've downloaded, not surfing the web or texting. Students complain about fellow students doing just this in class despite my request; they find it distracting and discourteous. Be a good citizen to your fellow students. Don't surf, text, or email. It can wait. You'll live.
Once class starts, turn off cell phones, PLEASE. PRETTY PLEASE.
Our New Classroom: For this new building the university has what will be for many of you a new policy: no food or drink of any kind in the lecture hall classrooms. There are no trash cans in the classroom by design. You need to abide by this policy. There is a person who manages the building and will, she tells me, look in on us from time to time.
Texts
Most of the literature we will be reading may be found on the internet for free. You can Google most everything we read except for some short stories and the novel. I also have had all assignments photocopied for e-reserves in place of an expensive anthology. Go to Blackboard, E-Reserves. You will have to search through the list by title of the work assigned. Some readings as PDFs you can access through links on the syllabus.
» Jean Rhys. Wide Sargasso Sea (W. W. Norton). Amazon.com Any used edition will work.
Basis for Evaluation
» Your grade is built from a range of three measurements.
» Quizzes: 30% I drop the lowest quiz. Miss a quiz and you receive a zero. There are no makeup quizzes.
» Group Work: 10% Miss group work and you receive a zero.
» Two exams: 60% Exams are combination of ID/short answer and essay. Be alert for terms I give in class and write on the board. They are central to the ID/short answer part of each exam. We will review exam questions in advance.
The final exam is optional. If you don't do as well as you like on one of the first two exams, you may take the final exam and substitute that grade for one of the first two exams. There are no makeup exams.
» There is no extra credit.
219 - Journalism I: Fundamentals of Newswriting
219-01WI T 18:00- S. Swofford
219-02WI W 18:00- R. Roberts
Introduction to newspaper journalism. Emphasis on basic news writing and feature writing. Combines writing laboratory and lecture.
252 - Major American Authors: Realist to Modern
252-02 TR 1230- N. Morrissette
This course provides a survey of American literature from 1865 to the present, focusing on the representational strategies employed by authors and ranging across historical periods and literary genres. We will examine how authors contribute to a national literary tradition by reworking ideas of literature and nationhood. Along the way, we will consider questions about the boundaries and various functions of both literature and nation, as well as the ways in which literary texts have addressed (or failed to address) America’s critical struggles over the extension of democratic principles across lines of race, class, and gender. Authors may include Melville, Twain, Chesnutt, Harper, DuBois, Larsen, Wright, Brooks, Ellison, and Morrison.
