THE FOLLOWING ARE SOME OF THE COURSE OFFERINGS FOR FALL 2013
English 101-26: Postmodernism in Popular Culture
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 9:05-9:55
Jenara Turman
This course introduces the essential processes for successful academic writing. Consideration of purpose and audience are emphasized in order to familiarize you with the rhetoric used in various schools of learning. You will learn the difference between argument and report, and develop critical thinking skills. Essay assignments will encourage you to argue a question at issue using classic appeals of logic, ethics, and emotion.M y Academic Writing courses are designed to incorporate critical thinking skills in the development of scholarly/academic essays regarding contemporary topics culled from the mass media. I am intrigued and inspired by the popular culture of Western society. In addition to the required texts, we will discuss signs and texts from the mass media that illustrate the fragmentation and hybridization of postmodernism. Film, television, social networking, online videos, and memes are just a few of the resources we will utilize. Readings and discussion about current preoccupations, pastimes, and ideologies are important aspects of our coursework that will assist your daily and essay writing capabilities.
English 102-01Postmodernism in Popular Culture
Tuesday/Thursday 8:00-9:15
Jenara Turman
This course is designed to reinforce the required skills for successful writing in the academic disciplines. The writing processes important in this course are designed to familiarize you with the structure, content, and purpose of academic writing, and to instill research and documentation skills. You will learn the difference between argument and report, and develop critical thinking skills for the formation of persuasive critical analysis in various modes of academic rhetoric. My Academic Writing courses are designed to incorporate critical thinking skills in the development of scholarly/academic essays regarding contemporary topics culled from the mass media. I am intrigued and inspired by the popular culture of Western society. In addition to the required texts, we will discuss signs and texts from the mass media that illustrate the fragmentation and hybridization of postmodernism. Film, television, social networking, online videos, and memes are just a few of the resources we will utilize. Readings and discussion about current preoccupations, pastimes, and ideologies are important aspects of our coursework that will assist your daily and essay writing capabilities.
English 250: Introduction to British Literature
Fall 2013
Dr. Denys Van Renen
How did contact with Africa and the New World transform English culture? Commissioned to map the Niger River and the unexplored interior of Africa in the 1790s, Mungo Park was belittled for his white skin by African chiefs. The Bertrams, who enrich themselves with slave plantations, mistreat their young charge and cousin Fanny Price in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814). Olaudah Equiano (1789) narrates the haunting and brutal Middle Passage. These writings show that the slave trade not only dislocated millions of Africans beginning in 1562 when John Hawkins carried the first shipload of slaves to the Caribbean but also strained social relations in Europe and forced the English to re-imagine themselves after encountering others in Africa, the Far East, and the Americas. In addition to reading the three books mentioned, we will bookend our class with Shakespeare’s Othello (1603) and David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010). The focus of the course will be analyzing British literature through the lens of slavery; in the process, we will discuss the global reverberations of this phenomenon, tracking it across five continents in our introductory course.
English 251 (03 & 04) American Literature
Web-based
Dr. Susanne Bloomfield
English 251 will focus on classic and contemporary American novels, analyzing their themes, symbols, characterization, style, and
narrative techniques as well as their place in the American literary
tradition. Students will gain an appreciation for the diversity of
literary voices and develop an ability to read texts in relation to their
historical and cultural background in order to gain a richer
understanding of both text and context. Six novels as well
as critical readings will be required for the
course. The works to be discussed by the class as a whole include Daisy Miller by Henry James, Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, The Awakening and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin, and McTeague
by Frank Norris. In addition, students will join Literature Circles as
they study different texts in separate groups simultaneously, discuss
the works in Discussion Board responses, and create collaborative Wikis
to share with the class. The first Literature Circle covers novels
written by American Indian authors: Fools Crow by James Welch, Mean Spirit by Linda Hogan, The Long Knives Are Crying by Joseph Marshall III, and Indian Killer by Sherman Alexie. The second Literature Circle includes contemporary novels about the Great Plains: Plainsong by Kent Haruf, Goodnight, Nebraska by Tom McNeal, and Sandhills Ballad by Ladette Randolph.
English 254: Special Topics: New Orleans
Tuesday/Thursday 12:30-1:45
Dr. Robert Ficociello
We will explore the literature, culture, food, and history of America’s most unique city, New Orleans. We will divide our time between pre-Katrina, the storm, and post-Katrina eras. We will begin the course by understanding New Orleans’ status as an original melting pot and place in race relations, mix-raced/creole individuals, and Jim Crow culture. We will map the evolution of these issues before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina.
English 254: Special Topics: Graphic Novel
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 1:25-2:40
Dr. Susan Honeyman
This class will focus on the broad genre of art-writing called “visual narrative” in comic strips, art books, silent film, graphic journalism, comic books, and memoir. We will discuss such formal issues as the relationship between image and text, their interdependent potential for unique literary expression, as well as thematic issues like gender, youth, power, homophobia, colonialism, and violence. Sample readings will be early-late Batman, 1930s woodcut novels, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud (1993); The Arrival by Shaun Tan (2006); Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick (2011); Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrickhon (2006); Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City by Guy Delisle (2012); Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco (2009); Habibi by Craig Thomson (2011); Are You my Mother? by Alison Bechdel (2012); Gingerbread Girl by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover (2011); Daytripper by Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá (2010-2011); Axe Cop vol 3. by Malachai and Ethan Nicolle (2012) and more. Join us for a wide range of reading subjects, some stellar humor, and, always, a visual treat!
English 254/03: Special Topics: Children’s and Young Adult Fantasy
Monday/Wednesday 1:25-2:40
Dr. Megan Hartman
In this class, we will go on great quests, visit the worlds next door, watch as animals take on the roles of heroes, and see fantasy come alive in our own cities and towns. As we do so, we will explore why fantasy has always been such a popular medium for a younger audience and why that popularity has grown so much in recent years. Some people say that it’s escapist. Is that accurate? And is it a bad thing? Is there something more to fantasy than just going on imaginary adventures? What sort of truths does it help us to explore? Why might these truths be particularly relevant to children and teens? How has the focus of fantasy changed in recent years? How do newer texts reflect our modern culture? Why are the classic tropes so enduring?
To answer these questions and more, we will read classics such as Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lewis’s The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe; newer novels such as The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner and Mr. Monday by Garth Nix; and graphic novels, such as Mice Templar by Bryan J. L. Glass and Michael Avon Oeming. Assignments will focus on analyzing different modes of young adult fantasy, but you will also get to try your hand in writing it as well.
ENG 254: Shakespeare’s Tragedies
Dr. Marguerite Tassi
Romeo and Juliet, Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth. For many of us, these titles evoke memorable images of tragic love, violence, suffering, and death. This General Studies English course is designed to give students an exciting introduction to these famous Shakespeare’s tragedies as dramatic works of supreme artistry, profound humanism, and cultural value. The six tragedies we will study chart the course of Shakespeare’s development as a dramatist, from his early tragedies of fatal love and revenge to his later masterpieces of political corruption, destructive passions, and evil: We will explore Shakespeare’s understanding of the nature of tragedy, the passions and the mind, free will and fate, revenge and justice, goodness and evil. We will approach the plays from various perspectives—literary, theatrical, philosophical, and psychological. We will ask, too, how these plays were originally staged and how they are performed today. What is controversial, ambiguous, universal, and moving about these plays and about the particular characters who inhabit these tragic worlds? How does a performance of a Shakespeare play reflect an interpretation, and what meaningful and contradictory interpretations come to light through reading, watching, and performing his plays? What particular themes, dramatic devices, and character types did Shakespeare develop in his plays? Is there an essential pattern to Shakespearean tragedy, or is each tragedy singular in form and emotional resonance? In what ways is Shakespeare relevant today? Students will become intimately involved in Shakespeare's creative process and his vision of tragedy by addressing these and other questions, writing interpretive essays, watching performances, and taking part in informal performances of Shakespeare scenes. This course will be taught through brief lectures, discussion, film analysis, and dramatic readings/performance.
English 304: Grammar I
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 10:10-11:00
Dr. Megan Hartman
Most of us have an instinctual knowledge of English grammar, but few of us really understand how the sentences we use are structured or what specific rules govern that structure. In this course, you will learn how to break down the syntax of the English language using a variety of theories of grammar: descriptive, prescriptive, generative, and cognitive. These different theories will allow us to consider what rules govern our language, how and why syntax changes, what the underlying structure of the language might be, and how our brains process grammar. We will apply this understanding by analyzing the grammar of popular and classic texts and experimenting with using different grammatical structures in our own writing. By the end of the class, you will have a better understanding of how to avoid common grammatical errors, how to analyze the structure and usage of published texts, and how to improve your own writing style.
English 337: Popular Literature--Arthurian Legends: Then and Now
Tuesday/Thursday 11:00-12:15
Dr. Rebecca Umland
This course examines the Arthurian Legend from its inception in the Middle Ages to its resurgence in modern times. We will identify reasons for the enduring popularity of King Arthur and his entourage, but we will also take note of significant innovations introduced by modern revivalists. We will focus on written texts of power and originality, but we will also study provocative film adaptations of the legend,and its pervasive presence in the general culture: Round Table, Pizza, the Excalibur Hotel and Casino, Merlin’s Mufflers, and—in Kearney, Nebraska—a street named Camelot Way. Likely print texts include Goeffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, Chretien de Troyes’ Arthurian Romances, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, and Stephen Lawhead’s Avalon. We will also view some of the more important films from the thriving cinematic tradition.
English 362A: Survey of British and Commonwealth Literature I: Road Trip
Fall 2013
Dr. Denys Van Renen
Why is the journey so much more exciting than the destination? In this class covering the medieval, early modern, and Restoration and eighteenth century periods, we will study texts like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1387 - 1400), Shakespeare’s Richard II (1597), Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688), and Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1722). Each of these texts portrays journeys—for the purposes of pilgrimage, war, or colonization—while attempting to promulgate English national identity at home and abroad. Yet, as the title of the class indicates, a journey also suggests the discomfort that attends these national and imperial ventures.
Throughout the semester, we will study the complicated process of forming a cohesive national identity, especially as that identity is forged through contact with foreign lands. Do journeys erase an individual’s attachment to his/her homeland? What kind of communal associations are strengthened or weakened by national crises? How might colonial ventures abroad imperil or solidify national identity?
ENGLISH 373: FILM AS LITERATURE
Monday/Wednesday 2:30–3:45
The Mock Documentary, The Fake Documentary, and Docudrama
John Grierson introduced the word “documentary” in a review in 1926, in which he famously proposed that the documentary film was the “creative treatment of actuality.” But how, exactly, was he trying to distinguish documentary films from earlier practices of factual or non-fiction filmmaking? All sorts of films, such as travelogues, scientific films, sports films, boxing films, and so on, were considered as “non-fiction” films or “actualities,” so what was singularly distinctive about the documentary? Does documentariness derive from form or reception? The aim of the course is to examine the relationship(s) between fictional and documentary filmmaking practices, focusing on how each has influenced the other and how the two practices merged into the mockumentary (faux or fake documentaries, fictional works in a documentary format), and the docudrama (reality-based works in a fictional format). Topics will include the docudrama in early cinema, the Biblical documentary as faux documentary, the packaging of “reality” in the mock documentary, the ethics of reality-based manipulation, and reality television and documentary forms. Course Text: G. Rhodes and J. Springer, Eds., Docufictions: Essays On The Intersection Of Documentary And Fictional Filmmaking (2005). Partial List of Films To Be Studied During the Semester include Nanook of the North (1922), Mondo Cane (1962), In Search of Noah’s Ark (1976), Zelig (1983), This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Man Bites Dog (1992), Forgotten Silver (1995), and The Blair Witch Project (1999).
English 404: History of the English Language
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 12:20-1:10
Dr. Megan Hartman
Have you ever wondered why a wolf and his pack mates are wolves but a chef and his colleagues are not cheves? Why Shakespeare uses capitulate to mean “negotiate,” but we use it to mean “give in”? Or why a language that is supposedly Germanic has so darned many Latin words in it?
In History of the English Language, we will answer such questions by mixing together the study of history, culture, linguistics, and literature in order to understand where our language has been and why it developed the way it did. We will trace the language all the way from its Indo-European roots to the many different versions of English that are spoken across the globe today, touching on Middle English texts, the making of the dictionary, and the development of web-related slang along the way. The coursework will focus on projects that will allow you to use your understanding of where English has been to help you analyze what you see today. Ultimately, the knowledge you gain in the course will allow you to understand older versions of English, explain the many irregular features of English, appreciate the current variations within the language, and recognize the ways in which English is still evolving today.
ENG -415/823P-1 Advanced Fiction Writing
Tuesday/Thursday 2:00-3:15
Dr. Robert Ficociello
This class will study the techniques and form of prose fiction. Primarily, the course examines fiction written by the class members. However, we will read published contemporary stories and reviews of literary journals for the purpose of submitting work for publication.
English 463/873P: All the World’s a Stage:Shakespeare and Performance
Wednesday 4:30-7:20
Dr. Marguerite Tassi
What do performances in the new Globe and Blackfriars playhouses have to teach us about Shakespeare’s plays? How can we get in touch with Shakespeare’s theatrical vocabulary by studying the early printed scripts and considering how they were animated on the stage? This lively course will introduce students to original staging conditions in Shakespeare’s theaters, as well as the arts of performance and playwriting in order to bring the theatrical dimension of drama to the forefront. The centerpiece of the course will be Shakespeare’s plays—Romeo and Juliet, Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, As You Like It, and The Tempest. We will investigate each of these plays as dramatic works of art, attending to how the scripts direct actors and inspire various interpretations of staging and meaning. The course will involve critical inquiry into language, character, and genre, as well as experimentation with performance. We will watch footage of productions at the restored Globe Theatre and consider the afterlife of Shakespeare’s scripts in contemporary theater, film, and culture. One of the highlights of the course will be a screening of Julie Taymor’s The Tempest .
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THE FOLLOWING WERE SOME OF THE COURSE OFFERINGS FOR SPRING 2013
English 101: Introduction of Academic Writing
Jenara Turman
Introduction of Academic Writing is a course that introduces the required skills for successful writing in the university setting. The writing processes important in this course are designed to familiarize you with the structure, content, and purpose of academic writing. You will learn the difference between argument and report, and develop critical thinking skills. Projects and essay assignments will provide practice in persuasive and controversial opinion based claims in various modes of academic rhetoric.
English 102: Academic Writing and Research
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 10:10AM - 11:00AM
Jenara Turman
Academic Writing and Research is a course that reinforces the required skills for successful writing in the university setting. The writing processes important in this course are designed to familiarize you with the structure, content, and purpose of academic writing, and to instill research and documentation skills. You will learn the difference between argument and report, and develop critical thinking skills for the formation of persuasive critical analysis in various modes of academic rhetoric.
English 102H: Academic Writing and Research
MWF 10:10-11:00 and MWF 11:15-12:05
Jane Christensen
The primary goal of this course is to help students become more competent and confident critical readers and critical analytical writers. The anthology, A World of Ideas: Essential Readings for College Writers, is topically arranged, and students will read and discuss selections from such topics as Government/Politics, Justice, Wealth and Poverty, Mind, Nature, Ethics and Morality, Education, and Feminism. Generally each category has readings from antiquity as well as the most current thinkers in each discipline. Much of what students will read from this collection will reveal many of the underlying foundations and cultural mythologies of Western and global cultural concepts to which we adhere today. Students will be asked to extrapolate ideas from and respond to these readings in discussion, in writing, and through presentations/student-led discussions, and place these ideas into current cultural contexts. Intertextuality is emphasized—all disciplines are related in some way. This leads to an interchange between these writers and our current thoughts and contexts as readers, which becomes a sort of conversation. Students will also work on developing logical argumentative skill as well as building precision, efficiency, clarity, and vocabulary.
English 153GS: Democratic Vistas
Dr. Kathryn Benzel
The
question to be answered through the course work is WHAT IS AN
AMERICAN? WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE AN AMERICAN? This course focuses
reading on selected writings of major American cultural figures:
Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick
Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, Willa Cather,
Woody Guthrie, and Bob Dylan—all who have investigated and questioned
American identities. This course fulfills the General Studies
Democracy in Perspective requirement
English 217: Beginning Poetry Writing
Tuesday/Thursday 9:30-10:45
Dr. Donovan Welch
Ever wanted to write a poem? Here is your chance, one a week, in a variety of ways and forms.
In your horizontal life, why not write a few vertical moments? Why not write down to think and
feel up? Writing poems can be a substantial love for those who need to. Join us, and try to word
out that love.
English 234-01: Reading and Writing about Literature
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 10:10 AM - 11:00 AM
Dr. Michelle Beissel Heath
This course is for English majors and minors and a prerequisite for English 300-400 level literature courses. Its aim is to help students develop strategies for reading, researching, interpreting, and writing about literature in a variety of genres (fiction, poetry, drama). Possible texts include Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, excerpts from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Books, Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, poems by W.H. Auden and others, William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day.
English 234-02: Reading and Writing about Literature
Dr. Kate Benzel This
course is for English majors and minors and a prerequisite for English
300-400 level literature courses.It introduces strategies for reading
literature, explains the writing process and common writing assignments
for literature courses, provides instruction in writing about fiction,
poetry, and drama, and includes coverage of writing a research paper and
of literary criticism and theory. Reading includes Oscar Wilde’s The
Importance of Being Earnest; Katherine Mansfield’s short stories; T.S.
Eliot’s The Wasteland; and Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room.
English 235H: American Studies
Tuesday/Thursday 9:30-10:45
Dr. Robert Ficociello
We will explore the literature, culture, food, and history of America’s most unique city, New Orleans. We will divide our time between pre-Katrina, the storm, and post-Katrina eras. We will begin the course by understanding New Orleans’ status as an original melting pot and place in race relations, mix-raced/creole individuals, and Jim Crow culture. We will map the evolution of these issues before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina.
English 251 American Literature WI & CD
Web-based
Dr. Susanne Bloomfield
English 251: American Literature will examine American texts from the late nineteenth century to those published by contemporary writers. The class will focus on the literary periods represented by these works, a comparison of their themes, symbols, characterizations, styles, and narrative techniques as well as their place in the American literary tradition. Students will gain an appreciation for the diversity of literary voices—particularly those of women, laborers, and African Americans—and develop an ability to read texts in relation to their historical and cultural backgrounds in order to gain a richer understanding of both text and context. This course is an elective that fulfills the Culturally Diverse, Writing Intensive, and General Studies requirements for the University of Nebraska-Kearney. Six novels as well as contextual and critical background readings will be required for the course. The works to be discussed by the class as a whole include Daisy Miller by Henry James, Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, The Awakening and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin, and McTeague by Frank Norris. In addition, students will join Literature Circles as they study different texts in separate groups simultaneously, discuss the works in Discussion Board responses, and create collaborative Wikis to share with the class. The first Literature Circle covers books written during the Great Depression with students choosing between To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, and Native Son by Richard Wright. The second Literature Circle includes contemporary novels about the Great Plains: Plainsong by Kent Haruf, Goodnight, Nebraska by Tom McNeal, and Sandhills Ballad by Ladette Randolph. For more information, please contact Dr. Bloomfield (bloomfields@unk.edu).
English 251: American Literature
Jenara Turman
American Literature
is designed to introduce students to writings of American Literature
with a focus on the themes and motifs established by the changing
political, social, and cultural climate of American History. In this
course we will focus primarily on 20th century works. As we analyze and
interpret these writings we will focus on the application of literary
terminology and critical techniques.
English 254-03: Intro to Lit: Special Topics: Utopian Literature
Spring 2013: TTh 12:30 - 1:45 p.m.
Dr. Robert Luscher
In this course, we will explore classic and contemporary examples of fiction concerned with the idea of utopia. Authors who have written works that might fall under our consideration range from late 19th/ early 20th century writers such as W.D. Howells, Mark Twain, & H.G. Wells to more contemporary works by science fiction and feminist writers, as well as a number of modern works in between by authors such as Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, and others. Among the works currently under consideration for core texts are: Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland; B.F. Skinner, Walden Two, Ernest Callenbach,Ecotopia; Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed; Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar. We will also watch the films Lost Horizon (based on the novel by James Hilton) & The Village. Students will also be organized into reading circles, in which they will select a work from among a range of utopian or dystopian works for group discussion and presentation. Our goal in this course is to break new ground rather than cover works previously read, such as 1984, Brave New World, or The Hunger Games. In the best of all worlds, study of utopian fiction will lead us into discussions that pursue the contemporary implications of these ideal & not-so-ideal societies and the ongoing quest to create a good society that nurtures the best in human beings and leads to enriching lives.
English 254 CD: Special Topics
Origins of Middle-earth: The Silmarillion to The Hobbit
Wednesday 6:30PM - 9:20PM
Rebecca Addy
Origins of Middle-earth: The Silmarillion to The Hobbit is an introduction to literature designed to encourage students to critically analyze, read, and write about literature, as well as the areas of life literature impacts. The cultural diversity aspect is easily addressed in that Tolkien had a great understanding of the critical issues that prevailed in his “modern” world. These same issues are currently present, and some would say, intensified. The “modern” ideal was to approach life through the abandonment of the past – a past they felt had failed them. Tolkien voiced his contrary views in many ways – some scholarly and some more accessible to a general audience. Many scholars believe, however, that it was in his fiction that Tolkien’s views on culture, be that race, gender, social hierarchy, group anarchy, and loss of cultural identity, are voiced.
English 254: Special topics
Masculinity in Contemporary American Literature and Film
Monday/Wednesday 1:25-2:40
Paul O. Skinner
This course examines the concepts and multiple definitions of the masculine in contemporary American literature. Critical thought focuses on the portrayal of men in novels, film, and other media. Viewing, reading, evaluating and analyzing the literature of the latter half of the 20th century will be the key focus. Critical theories on masculinity in American popular culture will aid in the analysis of the texts and media read and viewed. What does masculinity mean in America especially in the last half of the 20th century? How has contemporary American literature and film addressed or not addressed the meaning of masculinity? In what ways are men depicted? Who are the characters that come to mind when asks what is a man? After the rise of American feminism, how are American men defined in literature and film? Are there other categories of masculinity or types of men portrayed in American literature and film? Can current theories of gender assist in refining or redefining what being a man means? What characters from American Literature exemplify masculinity or shaped what masculine means? Holden Caulfield, James Bond, Dirty Harry Callahan, Tyler Durden?
English 303: Introduction to Linguistics
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 10:10-11:00
Dr. Megan Hartman
Language is so natural to us that we use it and judge it without thinking about it carefully. This course serves as an introduction to the English language in all of its formal aspects: phonetics and phonology (sounds and sound system), morphology and lexicology (the structure of words and vocabularies), syntax (the structure of phrases, clauses, and sentences), and semantics (meaning). We will also consider variation in English and the politics of usage. Thus, this course will help you to think more precisely about language as a natural and social phenomenon; it will introduce you to the forms and functions of English in particular; it will inform your use of the language as well as your judgments about other peoples’ use; it will prepare some of you to teach about English, others to write about it, and all of you to participate in public debate about the role of English (and language generally) in American culture.
English 304: Grammar I
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 12:20-1:20
Dr. Megan Hartman
Most of us have an instinctual knowledge of English grammar, but few of us really understand how the sentences we use are structured or what specific rules govern that structure. In this course, you will learn how to break down the syntax of the English language using a variety of theories of grammar: descriptive, prescriptive, generative, and cognitive. These different theories will allow us to consider what rules govern our language, how and why syntax changes, what the underlying structure of the language might be, and how our brains process grammar. We will also apply this understanding by analyzing the grammar of popular and classic texts and experimenting with using different grammatical structures in our own writing in order to consider how we analyze and manipulate grammatical principles analyze writing and to improve our own writing style.
English 352A-01: Survey of US Literature I
Spring 2013: TTh 9:30 - 10:45 a.m.
Dr. Robert Luscher
In
this course, we will survey American literature from its early
manifestations to the middle of the 19th century, with attention to
traditional canonical texs and to works that have more recently begun to
appear in anthologies in order to provide a fuller picture of our
national literary history. Rather than engaging in a linear “Puritans to
the Civil War” survey, we begin our exploration at the end, with Walt
Whitman’s 1855 version of “Song of Myself,” a culmination of Romantic
idealism that celebrates of the substance of everyday American life.
From this launching point, we move to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poetry and
essays, and counterpoint his Transcendentalism with Ben Franklin’s
pragmatism. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s critical examination of his Puritan
heritage and Edgar Allan Poe’s forays into the Gothic imagination
follow, leading to study of the origins of short fiction as an American
genre and to an introduction to the writing of those “mobs of scribbling
women” that Hawthorne saw as dominating the popular press. We will
conclude the course with brief units on: the frontier impulse as it
appears in Henry David Thoreau and Caroline Kirkland; slave nattative
and related works, such as Melville’s “Benito Cereno”; and the earlier
American poetry that leads to the experimental lyrics of Emerson and
Whitman.
ENG 362A: Monsters, Heroes, and Lovers in the British Literary Tradition
Monday/Wednesday, 1:25-2:40 p.m.
Dr. Marguerite Tassi
This upper-division course offers a substantial introduction to major texts, authors, literary styles, and preoccupations of the Anglo-Saxon (Old English), Middle English, and Early Modern periods (ca. 450-1640 AD). We will begin with a selection of Anglo-Saxon poetry and then move on to study the well-known epic poem Beowulf. Next, we will turn to Chaucer with selections from his Canterbury Tales. Then we will read the works of some of the great poets and dramatists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including Marlowe, Shakespeare, Sidney, Donne, Herbert, and Marvell. Rather than assigning a broad swath of material, this course focuses on select works, giving you the chance to read and think deeply about each text. We will pay close attention not only to literary features, such as language, style, character, and genre, but also to cultural, political, artistic, and intellectual contexts for each work, including original performance conditions and manuscript or print production for the periods. These early works of literature ask us to think deeply about the nature of heroism and villainy, war and peace, revenge and forgiveness, good and evil, free will and determinism, love and hate, honor and shame, greed and altruism, and masculine and feminine values. The course is primarily discussion based, but includes brief introductory lectures, analysis of film clips (when possible), brief weekly written assignments, and essay projects.
English 362A: Sin and Settlement in England
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 11:15 – 12:05
Dr. Denys Van Renen
The depiction of Britain as a fertile land occupied by an unworthy race depends not simply on ecological and political reality; it also evokes a chosen land which must in the divine judgment be purged of sinners and bestowed on righteous people.
---Nicholas Howe,
Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England (1989)
Yet sometimes Nations will decline so low
From virtue, which is reason, that no wrong,
But Justice, and some fatal curse annext
Deprives them of thir outward libertie,
Thir inward lost
--John Milton, Paradise Lost (1674)
Course Description
Used by the chronicler Bede to justify Anglo-Saxon colonization of the Britons, by John Milton to malign English republicans who were not staunch supporters of the “Good Old Cause” of the English Revolution, and by many writers in between (and after), revolutions from the Middle Ages to the Restoration were understood as God’s punishment of sinful inhabitants who are only fit for subjugation. Recent settlers to the island or recently powerful domestic factions act as God’s instruments to cleanse the island, paving the way for divinely-sanctioned rulers of a “chosen land.” We will use this paradigm to understand roughly 1,000 years of British literature.
English 362B-WI: Survey of British Literature II
Tuesday/Thursday 12:30-1:45
Dr. Rebecca Umland
This course concentrates on the roots of Romanticism in the later half of the 18th-century, followed by its development in the early 19th century, and its continuation with the eminent Victorian poets. We will emphasize the poetry and prophetic, non-fiction prose, and take note of major literary and artistic movements, but we will also study the development of the novel in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Poets include: Gray, Collins, Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, P.B. Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Arnold, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, D.G. Rossetti, Swinburne, Morris, Wilde, Yeats, and Auden.
Prophetic prose will include: Shelley, Arnold, Carlyle, Ruskin, and Wilde.
Novels will be selected from the following: Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights; The Return of the Native or Tess of the d’Urbervilles; To the Lighthouse or Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
English 388 (Capstone Course) Ways of Worldmaking: Religion and Film
Monday/Wednesday 2:30
Dr. Sam Umland
The course aim is to bring together the disciplines of religious studies and film studies. The premise of the course is that films and religions are analogous. Religions and films both create worlds (not just narratives) and present those alternate worlds to their viewers/adherents. Movies offer glimpses of possible worlds, allowing the viewer to experience these worlds before returning–enriched, perhaps transformed–to everyday reality. Cinematic world making is analogous to what religions do through their myths, rituals, and texts–to highlight, praise or condemn certain ways of Being in the world.
English 411: Advanced Writing II
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 1:25-2:15
Dr. Brian Ray
This courses defines writing as a social act, meaning that students will compose essays in multiple genres while acquiring advanced vocabulary and theoretical perspectives for analyzing discourse across a range of media (academic books and journals, literary nonfiction, print and broadcast news, social media and transmedia). Students will compose longer papers of 10-15 pages with some choice of academic genre allowed, as well as shorter assignments in required genres such as graduate application letters, abstracts, CVs, and personal statements. They will receive guidance and encouragement in finding outlets for their work through publication, undergraduate research conferences, and organizations at the local or national level. Textbooks will include Holcomb and Killingsworth’s Performing Prose and Swales and Feak’s Navigating Academia.
English 418 and English 822P: Advanced Poetry Writing
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 11:15-12:05
Dr. Donovan Welch
If poems are words moving in time, the best ones make time tick. Here's your chance to get a few poems
written or revised to your and our satisfaction. And then submit them for publication? Or at least show them
to your relatives, proving you are the genius of your extended household?
ENG 425-01 & 02: Children’s Literature
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 11:15 AM - 12:05 PM
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 12:20 PM - 1:10 PM
Dr. Michelle Beissel Heath
In this course we will consider selections of literature written for, read by, recommended to, or representing children. We will investigate the relationship between adult authors and their younger target audience, question the ever-shifting historical definitions of that audience (and childhood itself), and debate the boundaries of various genres associated with children. This course does not center on pedagogical techniques (lesson plans) but instead investigates the broader issues concerning children and their literary texts. Possible texts include nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and classic 19th century children’s literature alongside more recent texts like Helen Potter's The Humming Room, Gregory Mone’s Fish, Pseudonymous Bosch’s The Name of this Book is Secret, Lizzie K. Foley’s Remarkable, Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief, Sheila Turnage’s Three Times Lucky, Deborah Wiles’ Countdown, Winifred Conkling’s Sylvia and Aki, Silas House's Same Sun Here, Kristin Levine's The Lions of Little Rock, and Barbara Wright’s Crow.
Eng 425: Children’s Literature
1:25-2:40 MW or 2:55-4:10 MW
Dr.Susan Honeyman
In this course we will consider selections of literature written for, read by, recommended to, or representing children. We will investigate the relationship between adult authors and their younger target audience, question the ever-shifting historical definitions of that audience (and childhood), and debate the boundaries of various genres associated with children (folklore, illustrated texts). This course does not center on pedagogical techniques (lesson plans) but instead investigates the broader issues concerning children and their books, which inform pedagogies. Such an approach should help lay the groundwork for a more comprehensive use of children’s literature in the future by teachers selecting readings, by parents wanting to understand their children’s book needs, or by anyone for pleasure reading.
Booklist: Folk and Fairy Tales, by Martin Hallett and Barbara Karasek; 90 Miles to Havana, by Flores-Galbis; Chimichanga, by Eric Powell; Delphine, by Richard Sala; The Lions of Little Rock, by K. Levine; La Linea, by A. Jarmillo; Show Me a Story, by Leonard Marcus; Trickster: Native American Tales, by Dembicki; Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, by Elaine Coerr; Nicholas, by René Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempé; Mighty Miss Malone, by Christopher Paul Curtis; Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart; Fantastic Mr. Fox, by Roald Dahl; Sugar and Spike Archives (vol. 1), by Sheldon Mayer; Wonderstruck, by Brian Selznick; One Crazy Summer, by Rita Williams-Garcia; Amistad; Anya’s Ghost, by Vera Brosgol; Kids of Kabul: Living Bravely Through a Never-Ending War, by Deborah Ellis; Axe Cop (Bad Guy Earth), by Malachai Nicolle and Ethan Nicolle
Eng 426/848: Literature for Adolescents
Tuesday: 3:30-6:20
Dr.Susan Honeyman
In this class we will focus on constructions of adolescence and how they complicate the genre we call “YA fiction.” In particular we will discuss the following issues as they pertain to youth: self-representation, political activism, masculinity, minimum-wage exploitation, violence, school-to-prison pipeline, sexual identity, animal rights, revisionary superheroes, and music. Our readings will include postmodern fairy tales, teen erotica, social criticism, graphic novels, and works analyzing, recounting and depicting youth subcultures and power.
Booklist: F. Wedekind’s Spring Awakening, Saenz’s Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Malinda Lo’s Huntress, Handler’s Why We Broke Up, Anderson’s Burger Wuss, Grant Morrison’s Animal Man, Vaughan’s Pride of Baghdad, Takami’s Battle Royale, LePan’s Animals, Shusterman’s Unwind, Westerfeld’s Leviathan, LaCour’s The Disenchantments, and Block’s I was a Teenage Fairy.
English 450: Seminar in World Literature
English 832: Colloquium: World Literature
The Quester Hero in World Literature
Tuesday/Thursday 11:00-12:15
Dr. Rebecca Umland
“It is part of the critic’s business to show how all
literary genres are derived from the quest-myth.”
-- Northrop Frye (Fables of Identity)
Frye’s
claim may be an exaggeration, but there can be little doubt that the
quest motif prevails in world literature. This seminar course proposes
to first identify what qualities define the archetypal quester hero,
first embodied in Chretien de Troyes’ 12th- century hero, Perceval. We
will then study his imprimatur and that of his transformative quest as
it appears and reappears in the literature of the west. How is it
employed in various configurations in modern literature and film? How
can we account for its enduring appeal?
In addition to Chretien’s
Perceval, we will look at the quester figure from short selections taken
from the German Parzival and Sir Thomas Malory’s Grail section. Other
likely texts include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Novalis’ Henry von
Ofterdingen, Coleridge’s "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and
Wordsworth’s "Resolution and Independence," Eliot’s "The Waste Land," Mann’s Death in Venice, Hilton’s Lost Horizon, and Malamud’s The Natural. We
will also consider a few quest films, critical readings by Northrop
Frye, Vladimir Propp, and Joseph Campbell on myth and literature, and a
few more specialized critical studies by Jessie Weston and Richard
Barber.
English 490 Teaching American Literature WI & CD
Web-based
Dr. Susanne Bloomfield
English 490: Teaching American Literature will examine the multitude of voices in American literature beginning in the mid-1800s until the present day. Students will not only identify major themes, symbols, and concerns of American writers over the past 150 years, examine the textual qualities that create literature of enduring value, and discuss the cultural and historical contexts of the works, but they will also learn strategies to teach these works in the secondary schools. In addition to two pedagogy texts, students will also join Literature Circles as they study different texts in separate groups simultaneously, discuss the works in Discussion Board Posts, and create collaborative Wikis to share with the class. Students will have a choice of final projects, including researching and writing a formal paper, designing a unit of lesson plans, or completing a creative project and accompanying lesson plan. The main texts for the course will include Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About it; Doing Literary Criticism: Helping Students Engage with Challenging Texts; and the Norton Anthology of American Literature II. In addition, students will choose one book in each of two literature circles: Short Stories and Short Novels. The short story collections will include the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Willa Cather, Flannery O’Connor and Leslie Marmon Silko; the short novel choices will include The Red Badge of Courage, Ethan Frome, Of Mice and Men, and House on Mango Street. For a more detailed syllabus, please contact Dr. Bloomfield (bloomfields@unk.edu).
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THE FOLLOWING WERE SOME OF THE COURSE OFFERINGS FOR SPRING 2012
English 101H: Introduction to Academic Writing: Semiotics: Examining Popular Culture
Jane Christensen
As suggested by the title of this course this will be study centered on the written exposure of ideas within the context of semiotic analysis of American popular culture. Presumably through intense and careful examination of the elements and phenomena of American popular culture we can learn more about different levels of our culture and what the popularity of certain elements says about us as a culture. Readings from Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers include topics such as consumer behavior, advertising, television-film-music, and American iconic figures. Semiotics is a particularly effective methodology for analyzing popular culture—semiotics is the study of signs, and symbols, and of locating meaning in any sort of text: print, images, and any other sort of media. Language development as well as writing practice by critical analysis is the heart of this course, also a heavy emphasis on discussion.
English 102:Writing about the Holocaust
MWF 10:10-11:00
Julie Flood
This class will explore the origins of the Holocaust, study the modern phenomenon of Revisionism and Americanization of the Holocuast, and learn about the modern genocides of Cambodia and Rwanda.
English 214: Beginning Fiction Writing
MWF 9:02-9:55
Dr. Robert Ficociello
This course provides the basic elements of writing narratives and critiquing short stories for those with little or no experience in writing fiction. For part of the course, we will study the various elements of short fiction—including character, setting, dialogue, scene, and point of view–through by reading student-selected short stories. Another aspect of the course will be run as a workshop, with each student presenting a story-in-progress to the class. Written critiques, an essential tool for improving one’s narrative craft, forms the final component of the course.
ENG 217: Beginning Poetry (WI, CD, ES, WS)
TH 2:00-4:50
Allison Hedge Coke
A close reading of poems written by students to discover what poems mean. This means a study of how versification contributes to or detracts from the paraphrasable content of a poem. Students will develop appropriate level skills in reading and writing poetry, by investigating and exercising in a variety of poetry writing forms/attempts. Students will select areas of commitment while keeping options open. Students will learn the workshop approach and method and begin to use terminology to adequately comment on poetic works presented and investigated. Students will begin to learn the art of rewrite and design of poetic shape. Students will earn the value of critiquing the artistic merit of literary work. All welcome.
English 234-02: Reading and Writing about Literature
MWF 11:15
Dr. Kate Benzel
This course is for English majors and minors and a prerequisite for English 300-400 level literature courses.It introduces strategies for reading literature, explains the writing process and common writing assignments for literature courses, provides instruction in writing about fiction, poetry, and drama, and includes coverage of writing a research paper and of literary criticism and theory. Reading includes Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest; Katherine Mansfield’s short stories; T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland; and Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room.
English 235H: American Studies: The 1950s: America’s Dream Time
T/TH 11:00-12:15
Dr. Robert Luscher
The American 1950s are seen in retrospect as a pastoral post-war era during which “traditional values” reigned, a more innocent time when prosperity was widespread and patriarchy provided order. While the nuclear families of television shows such as Father Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet, and Leave It to Beaver perhaps dominate our historical memories of this era, it was also the seed time for the turbulence of the 1960s, with various sub-currents of discontent that foreshadow later cultural upheavals. The 1950’s were also the time of the Beat poets, Elvis Presley and Little Richard, the McCarthy hearings, the quiz show scandals, and the beginnings of integration and the Civil Rights movement. In this course we will focus primarily on the literature of the period—J. D. Salinger, John Updike, John Cheever, Flannery O’Connor, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and others—but also focus on the era’s music, film, television, advertisements, and other popular culture as we explore beneath the surface of the mythology our culture has created about the American 1950s.
English 250: British Literature
MWF 9:05-9:55
Dr. Kate BenzelThis course is an introduction to literary studies that will familiarize you with the basics of close reading, critical analysis, and writing about literature. The focus will on cultural studies of early 20th Century British literature. Clearly any culture has an impact on its literature, but exactly what are the ways that early 20th Century culture shapes its literature and art? Is Modernism a cultural force or an aesthetic project? For example, does the decline in British Imperialism have anything to do with its nationalistic art during World War One? Do Einstein’s Theories of Relativity have any influence on the perceptions of “chaos” in contemporary visual art? Does Marx’s view of materialism suggest a “new society” of readers? Does the development of social sciences, particularly Freud’s psychoanalysis, reorient literature’s focus on character and interiority? Are there differences between English and American modern movements? Assignments will include short response papers (2 pp.) and longer investigative writing (5 pp.).
English 250: Introduction to British Literature (WI)
MWF 9:05-9:55
Dr. Megan Hartman
This course will provide an introduction to the features of British Literature from early poetry until the present. We will be reading poetry, novels, plays, and a graphic novel to explore issues of style, theme, characterization, and narrative technique. Because the topic is far too large to cover in a single semester, we will focus specifically on the theme of the hero’s journey, analyzing how authors use the different features of various media to explore and illustrate the hero in diverse ways and how the concept of the ideal hero changes in different social and political contexts. Because this course fulfills the Writing Intensive requirement, we will also focus some of our attention on developing the elements of good analytical writing: argument, organization, use of evidence, format, tone, and style.
English 251: Introduction to Literature: American Literature of Disaster
MWF 1:25-2:15
Dr. Robert Ficociello
This course provides an overview of American disasters from slavery to Hurricane Katrina. We’ll explore a variety of genres, including novels, short stories, film, Blues and Jazz music, and non-fiction and place these works within their cultural moments. We will first explore the South as a unique region within the United States that relied upon the enslavement of human beings. Next, we’ll focus on individual trauma and the Vietnam war. We’ll end the semester with a contemporary examination of New Orleans through the lens of Hurricane Katrina.
English 251: American Literature WI & CD
Web-based
Dr. Susanne Bloomfield
American Literature will examine American texts from the late nineteenth century to those published by contemporary writers. The class will focus on the literary periods represented by these works, a comparison of their themes, symbols, characterizations, styles, and narrative techniques as well as their place in the American literary tradition. Students will gain an appreciation for the diversity of literary voices—particularly those of women, laborers, and African Americans—and develop an ability to read texts in relation to their historical and cultural backgrounds in order to gain a richer understanding of both text and context. This course is an elective that fulfills the Culturally Diverse, Writing Intensive, and General Studies requirements for the University of Nebraska-Kearney. Six novels as well as contextual and critical background readings will be required for the course. The works to be discussed by the class as a whole include Daisy Miller by Henry James, Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, The Awakening and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin, and McTeague by Frank Norris. In addition, students will join Literature Circles as they study different texts in separate groups simultaneously, discuss the works in virtual groups through chats, and create collaborative Wikis to share with the class. The first Literature Circle covers books written during the Great Depression with students choosing between To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, and Native Son by Richard Wright. The second Literature Circle includes contemporary novels about the Great Plains: Plainsong by Kent Haruf, Goodnight, Nebraska by Tom McNeal, and Sandhills Ballad by Ladette Randolph.
English 253 Introduction to Literature: Non-Western Civilization
M/W 1:25-2:40
Dr. Susan Honeyman
In this course we will be examining fiction, graphic novels, and memoir, in translation and original, from a range of regions outside of the “Western” tradition. Films will also serve as an important medium for our investigation of non-Western cultures, granting exposure to different regions, their people, their customs, triumphs, and troubles. Some topics of discussion will be gender and power, globalization, human rights, political violence, labor, and poverty. Course readings: Stuffed and Starved: the Hidden Battle for the World Food System (Raj Patel), Girls of Riyadh (Rajaa Alsanea), Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi), Daytripper (Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon), City of God (Paulo Lins), Slave: My True Story (Mende Nazer), Sozaboy (Ken Saro Wiwa), and Barefoot Gen: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima (Keiji Nakazawa). Films: City of God (Dirs. Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund), Mammoth (dir. Lukas Moodysson), Trade (dir. Marco Kreuzpaintner), and Slumdog Millionaire (dirs. Danny Boyle & Loveleen Tandan )
English 253: Introduction to Literature: Non-Western Civilization
MWF 9:05-9:55
Julie Flood
This class explores five events well-known to Americans: - the bombing of Hiroshima, the war in Viet Nam, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and the Rwandan genocide - and studies them through the perspectives of the people who actually experienced them. The points of view are most distinctly not American.
English 254: Shakespeare's Tragedies
T/TH 9:30-10:45
Dr. Marguerite Tassi
This writing-intensive course is designed to give you an exciting introduction to Shakespeare’s tragedies as literary texts and dramatic performances. The five plays we will study (Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth) chart the course of Shakespeare’s development as a dramatist, from his early tragedy of fatal love to his later masterpieces of revenge, jealousy, and chaos. The fundamental questions we will ask about the plays and its characters center on the human condition—what does it mean to be human in a tragic world, and what exalts or degrades our humanity? We’ll explore Shakespeare’s understanding of suffering and passions, free will and fate, revenge and justice, goodness and evil. We will approach the plays from various perspectives—literary, theatrical, philosophical, psychological, and performative. Other questions that will inform our discussions include: How were these plays originally staged? What is controversial, ambiguous, and universal about them? How does a performance of a Shakespeare play reflect an interpretation, and what meaningful and contradictory interpretations come to light through reading, watching, and performing his plays? What particular themes, dramatic devices, and character types did Shakespeare develop in his plays? Is there an essential form and definition of Shakespearean tragedy? How does Shakespeare continue to live today in our culture? You will become intimately involved in Shakespeare's creative process and his vision of tragedy by addressing these and other questions, writing literary analyses, watching performances, and taking part in informal workshops and “productions” of Shakespeare scenes. This course will be taught through lecture, discussion, film analysis, and dramatic readings/performance.
English 254: Literature of the Holocaust
T/TH 2:00-3:15
Julie Flood
We will read a variety of Holocaust literature, from survivor accounts to an acclaimed young adult novel. The purpose of this class will be to come to some understanding of what it means to be a survivor in a world that cannot possible begin to understand what has been survived.
English 303: Introduction to Linguistics
MWF 10:10-11:00
Dr. Megan Hartman
Language is so natural to us that we use it and judge it without thinking about it carefully. This course serves as an introduction to the English language in all of its formal aspects: phonetics and phonology (sounds and sound system), morphology and lexicology (the structure of words and vocabularies), syntax (the structure of phrases, clauses, and sentences), and semantics (meaning). We will also consider variation in English, how the language has developed over time, language acquisition, and the politics of usage. Thus, this course will help you to think more precisely about language as a natural and social phenomenon; it will introduce you to the forms and functions of English in particular; it will inform your use of the language, but also your judgments about other peoples’ use; it will prepare some of you to teach about English, others to write about it, and all of you to participate in public debate about the role of English (and language generally) in American culture.
English 304: Grammar I
MWF 12:20-1:20
Dr. Megan Hartman
Most of us have an instinctual knowledge of English grammar, but few of us really understand how the sentences we use are structured or what specific rules govern that structure. In this course, you will learn how to break down the syntax of the English language using a variety of theories of grammar: descriptive, prescriptive, transformational, and cognitive. These different theories will allow us to consider what rules govern our language, how and why syntax changes, what the underlying structure of the language might be, and how our brains process grammar. We will also apply this understanding by studying different theories of teaching grammar, analyzing the grammar of others’ written work, and considering how we can use and manipulate grammatical principles to improve our own writing style.
English 362A WI: Monsters, Heroes, and Lovers in the British Literary Tradition
M/W 1:25-2:40
Dr. Marguerite Tassi
This writing-intensive course offers a substantial introduction to major texts, authors, literary styles, and preoccupations of the Anglo-Saxon (Old English), Middle English, and Early Modern periods (ca. 450-1640 AD). We will begin with a selection of Anglo-Saxon poetry and then move on to study the well-known epic poem Beowulf. Next, we will turn to Chaucer with selections from his Canterbury Tales. Then we will read the works of some of the great poets and dramatists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including Marlowe, Shakespeare, Sidney, Donne, Herbert, and Marvell. Rather than assigning a broad swath of material, this course focuses on select works, giving you the chance to read and think deeply about each text. We will pay close attention not only to literary features, such as language, style, character, and genre, but also to cultural, political, artistic, and intellectual contexts for each work, including original performance conditions and manuscript or print production for the periods. These early works of literature ask us to think deeply about the nature of heroism and villainy, war and peace, revenge and forgiveness, good and evil, free will and determinism, love and hate, honor and shame, greed and altruism, and masculine and feminine values. The course is primarily discussion based, but includes brief introductory lectures, analysis of film clips (when possible), brief weekly written assignments, and essay projects.
English 406-01:Principles of Literary Criticism
MW 1:25
Dr. Kate Benzel
This course provides in-depth coverage of the most common approaches to literary analysis today: feminism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, reader-response theory, new criticism, structuralism and semiotics, deconstruction, new historicism, cultural criticism, lesbian/gay/queer theory, African-American criticism, and postcolonial criticism. Each methodology will be discussed with interpretation examples from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. You will learn what critical theory offers in terms of its practical understanding of literary texts and in terms of personal analytic strategies. The course is "how-to" for undergraduates new to critical theory and will broaden your repertoire of critical approaches to literature.
English 419/822P Advanced Poetry Writing Workshop (WI, CD, ES, WS)
TH 6:30-9:20
Allison Hedge Coke
An advanced course in writing lyric poetry. Students concentrate upon their own style and subject matter. Advanced development in commitment to the work and to life practice as a poet will occur. Students will gain value in advanced readings of poetic works and incorporate into strategy exercises accomplished within and outside of the classroom. Critical thinking and abstract reasoning are encouraged and supported in the coursework. Development of typical literary engagement in the field at an advanced level is expected.
English 425-03 Children’s Literature
M/W 2:55-4:10
Dr. Susan Honeyman
In this course we will consider selections of literature written for, read by, recommended to, or representing children. We will investigate the relationship between adult authors and their younger target audience, question the ever-shifting historical definitions of that audience (and childhood itself), and debate the boundaries of various genres associated with children (folklore, illustrated texts). This course does not center on pedagogical techniques (lesson plans) but instead investigates the broader issues concerning children and their books, which inform pedagogies. Such an approach should help lay the groundwork for a more comprehensive use of children’s literature in the future by teachers selecting readings, by parents wanting to understand their children’s book needs, or by anyone for pleasure reading. Course Readings: Folk and Fairy Tales (Hallett and Karasek), Hidden in Plain Sight: the Tragedy of Children’s Rights from Ben Franklin to Lionel Tate (Barbara Bennett Woodhouse), Mysterious Benedict Society (Trenton Lee Stewart), My Thirteenth Winter (Samantha Abeel), Sugar and Spike, volume 1 (Sheldon Mayer), The Birchbark House (Louise Erdich), Bud, Not Buddy (Christopher Paul Curtis), One Crazy Summer (Rita Williams-Garcia), Baby Mouse (Jennifer and Matthew Holm), Goodbye Chunky Rice (Craig Thompson), Axe Cop (Malachai Nicolle and Ethan Nicolle). Plus, many picture books—hopefully some of your favorites from your own childhood!
English 425-01 & 425-01H
MWF 11:15-12.:05
English 425-02
MWF 10:10-11:00
Dr. Michelle Beissel Heath
In this course we will consider selections of literature written for, read by, recommended to, or representing children. We will investigate the relationship between adult authors and their younger target audience, question the ever-shifting historical definitions of that audience (and childhood itself), and debate the boundaries of various genres associated with children. This course does not center on pedagogical techniques (lesson plans) but instead investigates the broader issues concerning children and their literary texts. Possible texts include nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and classic 19th century children’s literature alongside more recent texts like Christopher Paul Curtis’ Bud, Not Buddy, Rita Williams-Garcia’s One Crazy Summer, Rodman Philbrick’s The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg, Jacqueline Kelly’s The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief, Jeanne DuPrau’s The City of Ember, Laurel Snyder’s Bigger than a Breadbox, and Pseudonymous Bosch’s The Name of this Book is Secret.
English 426-01 Adolescent Literature
T/TH 4-6:50
Dr. Susan Honeyman
In this course we will read selections of literature that have been popular among adolescents (or prescribed to them) with an aim of understanding the concept of adolescence, its history, and the phenomenon of its relatively recent specialized literature. We are not focusing on pedagogical techniques but will instead investigate the larger questions of adolescence and its separate literature in culture—for example, what are the reasons for and uses of the genre? This broader cultural approach should help lay the groundwork for a more informed use of YA literature in the future by teachers making lesson plans, parents wanting to understand teens’ book needs, scholars for research, or by anyone for pleasure reading. Course texts: Sweetly (Jackson Pearce), Pride of Baghdad (Brian Vaughan), Hunger (Jackie Kessler), Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures (Phoebe Gloeckner), Habibi (Craig Thompson), Leviathan (Scott Westerfeld), The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern), The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing (M.T. Anderson), Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Ransom Riggs).
English 427 - Electronic Literacy
Spring 2012
T/TH 11:00-12:15
Dr. Sam Umland
Our aim will to explore the concept of media and mediation in broad terms, looking not only at modern technical media and mass media but also at the idea of a medium as: 1) a means of communication; 2) a set of institutional practices; and 3) a system and an environment. The questions we will explore include: What is a medium? What is the relation of technology to media? How do media affect, simulate, and stimulate sensory experiences? How are we to understand concepts such as “unmediated” or “immediate”? How do media become intelligible and concrete in the form of “meta-pictures” or exemplary instances, e.g., when a medium reflects on itself (e.g., films about film)? How has modern warfare created new visual cultures and new media networks? Texts: Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media; W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory; Paul Virilio, War and Cinema; and W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen, Eds., Critical Terms for Media Studies.
English 467/879: Seminar in Romanticism
Hours: M/W: 2:00-2:30, T/TH 12:30-1:45.
Dr. Rebecca Umland
“All of them knew increasingly well what [Wallace] Stevens seems to have known best among the poets of our time, that the theory of poetry is the theory of life. As they would not yield the first to historical convention, so they could not surrender the second to religion or philosophy or the tired resignations of society. They failed as the Titans did, massive in ruin and more human than their successors.”
“We have been, and still are, in a phase where our poets are Romantic even as once poets were Christian, that is, whether they want to be or not.”
--Harold Bloom
Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Berg Professor of English, New York University
In his provocative pronouncements quoted above, eminent critic Harold Bloom asserts that High Romanticism, the inception of which can be found in the later half of the 18th century, established a tradition of which poets today still partake. He also claims that the demands placed on romantic poetry (or those which it willingly assumed) were essentially religious in function, and that the romantic impulse is, ultimately, doomed to failure, though this is a claim that must be qualified carefully. These are audacious statements, but from them we can see why an understanding of the English Romantic poets is so important. We will study the inception of High Romanticism, primarily in its literary, but also in its cultural context; strive towards an understanding of what a romantic poem is—identifying its essential features (thus focusing on precision rather than scope); and develop an appreciation for the rich legacy we have inherited from this greatest of “failures.”
English 490/899: Teaching American Literature CD & WI
Web-based
Dr. Susanne Bloomfield
Teaching American Literature will examine the multitude of voices in American literature beginning in the mid-1800s until the present day. Students will not only identify major themes, symbols, and concerns of American writers over the past 150 years, examine the textual qualities that create literature of enduring value, and discuss the cultural and historical contexts of the works, but they will also learn strategies to teach these works in the secondary schools. In addition to two pedagogy texts, students will also join Literature Circles as they study different texts in separate groups simultaneously, discuss the works in virtual groups through chats or audio/video Wimba, and create collaborative Wikis to share with the class. Students will have a choice of final projects, including researching and writing a formal paper, designing a unit of lesson plans, or completing a creative project and accompanying lesson plan. The main texts for the course will include Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About it; Doing Literary Criticism: Helping Students Engage with Challenging Texts; and the Norton Anthology of American Literature II. In addition, students will choose one book in each of two literature circles: Short Stories and Short Novels. The short story collections will include the works of Edgar Allen Poe, Jack London, Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston, and Louise Erdrich; the short novel choices will include The Red Badge of Courage, Ethan Frome, Of Mice and Men, and House on Mango Street.
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The Following were some of the course offerings for Fall 2011
English 153GS: Democratic Vistas
M/W 1:25
Dr. Kathryn Benzel
The question to be answered through the course work is WHAT IS AN AMERICAN? WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE AN AMERICAN? This course focuses reading on selected writings of major American cultural figures: Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, Willa Cather, Woody Guthrie, and Bob Dylan—all who have investigated and questioned American identities. This course fulfills the General Studies Democracy in Perspective requirement
English 188GS - General Studies Portal: Life Studies: Reading and Writing Autobiography
T/TH 11:00-12:15
Dr. Robert M. Luscher
The narrative impulse is fundamental to our lives as human beings: we seek to understand our own lives by telling our stories and we understand each other through the stories we share. In this course, students will examine autobiographical narratives that portray the experiences of authors of various ethnicities and nationalities. We will examine these works critically in order to understand the conventions of autobiography, as well as to explore the issues and the process involved in turning life into narrative art. Students will examine the literary techniques used by memoir writers through close reading and written analysis of these works, and then develop their own skills in articulating experiences from their lives in an autobiographical format. In essence, students will learn to achieve greater understanding of others’ stories and will acquire a greater facility in telling their own.
English 211: Introduction to Creative Writing
MWF 9:05AM
Dr. Robert Ficociello
The course is an introduction to three of the four creative genres: poetry, fiction, screenwriting, and non-fiction. In addition to fostering the creative elements of writing and the process of revision, we will develop our critical skills from a writer’s perspective. Student writing will be discussed in a workshop format and in individual conferences with the instructor. Students will also read, discuss, and present a wide range of contemporary examples of all four genres. Primarily, this course is geared toward developing the process of writing and learning existing forms of creative writing through an increased critical awareness. Required texts: David Caplan’s Poetic Form: An Introduction and Janet Burroway’s Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft.
English 217 - Beginning Poetry Writing WI, CD, WS
Thursday 6:30-9:20 pm
Allison Hedge Coke
A writing workshop for anyone interested in trying a hand at the nuts & bolts of poetry. This three-credit course is a study of the basic elements of poetry writing in a workshop setting. Peer review, terminology, and close critique of original poems is significant to the development of original poetic verse. This course familiarizes beginning students with the practice of poetry, workshop technique, and the contemporary poetic field. All students with interest in language (reading/writing) are welcome! The course is a close reading of poems written by students to discover what poems mean. This means a study of how versification contributes to or detracts from the paraphrasable content of a poem. Emphasis placed on modern forms and techniques. Students will develop appropriate level skills in reading and writing poetry, by investigating and exercising in a variety of poetry writing forms/attempts. Students will select areas of commitment while keeping options open. Students will learn the workshop approach and method and begin to use terminology to adequately comment on poetic works presented and investigated. Students will begin to learn the art of rewrite and design of poetic shape. Students will earn the value of critiquing the artistic merit of literary work.
English 251: Introduction to American Literature (2 sections)
T/TH 2:00-3:15CD and also Web-Based CD & WI
Dr. Susanne Bloomfield
Introduction to American Literature will examine texts written by classic American authors from the late nineteenth century to contemporary writers. The class will focus on the literary periods represented by these works and their historical significance, a comparison of their themes, symbols, characterizations, styles, narrative techniques, and cultural significance as well as their place in the American literary tradition. Students will gain an appreciation for the diversity of literary voices—particularly those of women, laborers, and African Americans—and develop an ability to read texts in relation to their historical and cultural contexts in order to gain a richer understanding of both text and context.
English 254 (special topics): Graphic Novel
Dr. Susan Honeyman
MWF 10:10-11
This class will focus on the broad genre of art-writing called “visual narrative” in comic strips, art books (particularly woodcut influence), collage novel, silent film, graphic journalism, comic books, and graphic novels (heroic, saga, adaptation, and memoir). We will be discussing such technical issues as the relationship between image and text, their interdependent potential for unique literary expression, word adaptation to image, and graphic novel adaptation to film as well as thematic issues like gender and power, youth and power, homophobia, colonialism, violence. Sample readings will be early-late Batman, Krazy Kat, Castle Waiting, Exit Wounds, Safe Area Gorazde, Bone, and Scott Pilgrim.
English 254: (special topics) Walt Whitman & Bob Dylan and Friends
M/W/F 9:05
Dr. Kathryn Benzel
Reading the poetry and prose of Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, Woody Guthrie, and Bob Dylan represent American culture and its continual struggles for civil liberties and redefinition of American democracy. Though 100 years separate these artists, they all celebrate America’s folk traditions, its work ethic; they criticize its wars and celebrate its diversity. Whitman writes from the 1850s to 1890s; Sandburg and Guthrie write during the 1930s; Dylan from the 1960s to the present. This course fulfills General Studies Humanities Requirement and English Elective.
English 337: Popular Literature
Arthurian Legends: Then and Now
T/TH 11:00-12:15
Dr. Rebecca Umland
This course examines the Arthurian Legend from its inception in the Middle Ages to its resurgence in modern times. We will identify reasons for the enduring popularity of King Arthur and his entourage, but we will also take note of significant innovations introduced by modern revivalists. We will focus on written texts of power and originality, but we will also study provocative film adaptations of the legend, and its pervasive presence in the general culture: Round Table Pizza, the Excalibur Hotel and Casino, Merlin’s Mufflers and, in Kearney, Nebraska, a street named Camelot Way. This course counts as an English elective for majors and also towards partial fulfillment of the Popular Culture minor. (English 337 can be taken twice towards fulfillment of either of those requirements.)
English 338: Special Topics, Studies in Literary Genre – Poetics CD, WI, WS
T/TH 3:30
Allison Hedge Coke
This course is designed to introduce students to some major theoretical concerns, many of them undermining conventional, assumptions about the relationships between the writer, the text, and the world. To structure inquiry, the course is divided into four units, the introduction followed by three units labeled politics, philosophy, and psychology. We will conclude our study of each unit by workshopping your previous creative writing. These units are ordered in such a way that they serve as a kind of chronological study of many of the most important theorists in the West, and as such the course provides an introduction to the history of ideas of civilization through the lens of creative writing theory. To be more specific, as the focus of the course moves from politics to epistemology to psychology, it reflects the evolution of Western thought from a faith in the externality of being (politics) to a disruption of that faith and a discovery of the subjectivity of being (epistemology) to a full embrace of the psyche’s powerful influence on perception (psychology) and then going so far as to critique the validity of commonsense perception (postmodernism). The course includes feminist ideology, discussion of masculinity, and queer theory in literary work.
ENG 352A/H: Survey of US Literature I
T/TH 9:30-10:45
Dr. Robert M. Luscher
Historical and critical study of traditional major American writers and the literary period from the inception of a national literature to the mid-nineteenth century, as well as writers of the period who have not traditionally been included in the standard American literary canon. We will read a broad spectrum of works from various genres as we explore the creation of our national literature, issues of American identity, the textual qualities create literature of enduring value, and the cultural contexts that might enhance such literature. Poe, Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, and Whitman are among the major authors studied, though we will read works from a variety of other authors in counterpoint as we navigate the period’s rich tradition.
English 362B: British Literature Survey: 18th Century – 20th Century
M/W/F 11:15
Dr. Kathryn Benzel
Analyses of literature enumerate a variety of purposes for literature, such as to teach; to entertain; to delight; to record; to civilize; to humanize. In essence, literature serves to express emotions, dreams, and truths hidden beneath a surface world, to tell us something of the human world. Thus, the purpose of this course is to familiarize you with the major literary figures, techniques, and ideologies found in British literature in the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries. The course will be divided into four major periods: Restoration & 18th Century (1660-1775), Romantic (1775-1830), Victorian (1830-1900), and Modern (1900-1935) periods. We will read Alexander Pope, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, Thomas Hardy, William Butler Yeats, World War One Poets, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf.
English 424/871: Teaching English in the Secondary School
Tuesday 6:30-9:20 p.m.
Dr. Susanne Bloomfield
English 424 will engage students in exploring techniques in becoming an English teacher/learner in the junior high/middle school and secondary classrooms. Students will build a knowledge base for individual experimentation in methods for teaching by assembling a repertoire of ideas and strategies for diverse learners and by developing multicultural competencies as they learn to think about themselves in interconnected local, regional, and global societies.
English 447/855P: Seminar in Post-World War II American Literature/ Contemporary American Literature
Tuesday 6:30PM - 9:20PM
Dr. Robert Ficociello
Contemporary Subjectivity and American Literature: This course deals intimately with late 20th century America as a pluralistic and constructed culture. Within some of the major trends of contemporary critical theory, we will address the ways in which race, gender, ethnicity, and nationalism are generated and represented in American literature and film. More so, we will look how these forms constitute what we mean by “American,” how critical theory unpacks these forms, and how we construct others/Others.
ENG 463/873P: All the World’s a Stage: Shakespeare and Performance
Wednesday 4:30-7:20
Dr. Marguerite Tassi
This course will introduce students to original staging conditions in Shakespeare’s theaters, as well as the early modern arts of performance and playwriting. The centerpiece of the course will be Shakespeare’s plays—Romeo and Juliet, Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, As You Like It, and The Tempest. We will investigate each of these plays as dramatic works of art, attending to how the scripts direct actors and inspire interpretation. The course will involve critical inquiry into language, character, and genre, as well as experimentation with performance. We will watch footage of productions at the restored Globe Theatre and consider, as well, the afterlife of Shakespeare’s theater in contemporary film. A screening of Julie Taymor’s The Tempest will be a highlight of the course.