University Core Literature Courses
ENGL 23—Introduction to American Literature 2 3 sem. hrs. Continuation of ENGL 22, following the development of British literature from the late 18th century to the present. Approaches vary with instructor; authors studied are likely to include Austen, the Brontës, G. Eliot, Joyce, Shaw, the Shelleys, Tennyson, Woolf, and Wordsworth. Typically offered spring term. Prereq: ENGL 1 or equiv. and ENGL 2 or equivalent
Dr. Julia Chavez 1003 MW 2:25-3:40 Literary Wanderers The wanderer—a frequently appearing character in literature—forces us to question social and cultural norms by deviating from the expectations of a perceived mainstream culture. In this course, we will examine an array of wanderers in works of poetry and fiction from the late eighteenth century to the present in order to better understand those works and the major literary movements in this time frame. Examining the trope of wandering in a variety of forms—temporal, spatial, cultural, aesthetic, imaginative—we will consider the following questions: What attitudes about wandering do Romantic, Victorian, Modern, and Postmodern texts embody? What role does wandering play in the cultural imagination of each period? How do these issues relate to ideas about the relationship between an individual and society? How do the texts of each period “wander” from established literary conventions? Our goal will be to trace a historical line of wanderers from the 18th century to the present in an effort to see continuities and discontinuities between some of the most intriguing and influential works of literature produced by Romantic, Victorian, Modern, and Postmodern writers.
ENGL 033—Introduction to American Literature 2 Continuation of ENGL 32, following the development of American literature from the Civil War to the present. Approaches vary with instructor; authors studied are likely to include Bishop, Cather, Chopin, T.S. Eliot, Ellison, Erdrich, Faulkner, Freeman, Frost, Gilman, Hemingway, Hughes, Hurston, James, Jewett, Morrison, O’Connor, Pound, Stein, Twain, Wharton, and Wright. Typically offered spring term. Prereq: ENGL 1 or equiv. and ENGL 2 or equiv.
Dr. Dana Edwards Produehl 1001 MWF 9:00-9:50 "What Makes American Literature American?" The thematic focus of this class will be questions of American-ness. Aside from geographic constraints and patriotic identification, how do we define America, and the literature of America? Is American-ness racialized? Is it gendered? What themes come out in American literature that give you possible answers to these, and similar, questions? To move toward possible answers, we will be reading and discussing a broad range of genres: novels, short stories, essays, poetry, and drama. We will also be reading a diverse range of authors including those from the mainstream as well as the periphery. My hope is that you come to understand the complexity of American literature, and that you engage with such complexity throughout your writing assignments.
Fr. Ron Bieganowski, S.J. 1005 TTH 12:35-1:50 "What does it mean to be American?" This course will trace the outlines of the continuing story of what it means to be American as told in fiction, drama, and poetry by Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Edith Wharton, Henry James, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, Lorraine Hansberry, Robert Frost, Gwendolyn Brooks, Flannery O’Connor, James Baldwin, and Bernard Malamud, along with others such as Denise Levertov, T. S. Eliot, and Edward Albee. Readings will include Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, “Daisy Miller,” The Glass Menagerie, The Hairy Ape, “The Bear,” “Big Two-Hearted River,” and “Sonny’s Blues.” The diverse range of action, characters, setting, narrative perspective and sequence, irony, and imagery — all help tell the story. Two papers (4-5 pp.), several “Reflections” (1 p. each), a few quizzes, and final exam (essay) will be required. Discussion format.
English 042: Introduction to Loterature; Fiction 3 semester hours An introduction to various types of fiction (e.g., fable, short story, novel) representing a range of cultural perspectives with emphasis on techniques for analyzing the conventions, structure and style of fiction. Offered every term. Prereq: ENGL 1 or equiv. and ENGL 2 or equiv.
Dr. Barbara Glore 1001 MWF 8:00-8:50 Navigating Cultural Constructs In this class, we will engage in a shared inquiry of classic and contemporary literary works that are preoccupied with characters in the search for their personal identity. In noting how these characters navigate sometimes hostile settings, we will be attentive to the ways that cultural differences of race, gender, and ethnicity can add to social difficulties as well. As a way of shining a light on our readings, we will explore basic literary theories in order to approach the works through a variety of lenses. To paraphrase the English critic Terry Eagleton, constructing identity can be self-serving; oftentimes, the coping skills required of characters in fiction are the same skills required of all of us when dealing with everyday life. In this way, as we explore these works of fiction together, we will strive to find meaning in the text and to learn more about ourselves, others, and the intersection of the two in the world.
Professor Steve Hartman Keiser 1002 MWF 9:00-9:50 The Axe and the Frozen Sea Our primary goal is to encounter and enjoy important works of fiction. Good stories touch us at our truest core, spurring us to reflect on and reassess our lives: what it means to be—and what it means to be responsible for our choices in speaking and acting. Franz Kafka said, “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” In this course we will learn to become better axe-wielders. One way we will do this is by looking at the remarkable variation in the English language around the world and how authors use this to build their stories and characters.
Dr. Donna Foran 1003 MWF 11:00 - 11:50 Fiction 042, Section 1003 will include for textbooks, "The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 7th edition, "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens; "A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway; "Mother Night" by Kurt Vonnegut, and "A Long Way Down" by Nick Hornby. There will be four tests including the final, each worth 20% of the grade, two formal papers, each worth 10% of the grade, and 10 reaction papers to the short stories and novels assigned, 5 due before the mid and 5 due after the mid and before the final.
Sr. Bernadette Prochaska 1004 TUTH 11:00-12:15 Fiction with a World View This course, Introduction to Fiction 042.1004 examines the literature and perspectives expressed by writers from America, Ireland, England, Spain, Russia, and beyond. The student is invited to explore the multiple landscapes of the imagination which are engaged by writers who present various global cultures and mores. Besides the fiction of Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, and Willa Cather, the works studied by the students include Leo Tolstoy, Joseph Conrad, Franz Kafka, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, James Joyce, Isaac Beshavis Singer and others. The vast world of fiction incorporates a marvelous and enriching human journey with its quests and obstacles, its glamorous visions, and its disastrous misfortunes, a journey that we all share.
Dr. Erik Ankerberg 1005 TUTH 12:35-1;50 Fiction and the Quest for Beauty This course explores the extent to which fiction allows us to recuperate the notion of beauty as a value. As we read significant works of fiction by writers such as Hawthorne, James, Kafka, Mansfield, and Tolstoy we will consider how different writers define beauty, as well as the consequences of those definitions for us as readers. We will also explore the means by which authors employ literary elements to create or, in some cases, destroy the beautiful.
Professor Diane Long Hoeveler 1006 TUTH 2:00-3:15 Mystery, Romance, Horror, Science Fiction This course will introduce you to the basics of how to read and interpret fiction by focusing on a variety of popular fictional genres: the mystery or detective novel, the woman’s romance, the horror story, and science fiction. Specifically, we will be investigating how the detective genre produces and/or undermines notions of coherent, knowable identities and how the act of interpretive reading mimics the process of investigation and probe that characterizes the Detective himself. We will be reading short stories and novels about Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan, and Hannibal Lecter. Romance and Horror works will interrogate how our culture has constructed notions of seductive sameness and otherness, while the SF works we will read will examine how fantasy formations operate in imagining the future. Two papers, a take home midterm, and a take home final are the requirements for this course.
Professor Sarah Wadsworth 1007 TUTH 3:35 - 4:50 The Art of Reading Fiction To the aspiring writer of fiction, Henry James, a master of the art of fiction, offered two bits of advice. First, he urged, “Write from experience and experience only.” Second, he added, “Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!” In this course, you will read a wide range of short fiction by writers who seem to have done just that and done it extraordinarily well. Yet the course will focus as much on the experience of the reader as on the experiences conveyed through the writing of fiction. Emphasizing practical analytical skills as well as a range of theoretical approaches, this course is designed to train students to become the kinds of readers on whom nothing is lost.
English 043: Introduction to Literature; Drama 3 semester hours An Introduction to the forms and principles of drama, often surveying its development from its origins in ancient Greece to the contemporary theater, with emphasis on techniques for analyzing the conventions, structures and styles of dramatic literature. Class will typically read works from a number of centuries and study authors from continental, British and American traditions. Classes usually include at least one play by Shakespeare. Offered every term. Prereq: ENGL 1 or equiv. and ENGL 2 or equiv.
Dr. Jason Nado 1001 MWF 9:00-9:50 The Drama of Domesticity This course will examine how the domestic sphere is presented in dramatic works throughout the Seven Great Ages of Drama. The course will begin by exploring the question, “What is domesticity?” The goal of the course is to continue arriving at an answer to this question by focusing on the social, economic, and political consequences of the domestic on the lives of characters from a multitude of backgrounds. Relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, and siblings will be read and analyzed to come to terms with domesticity and its impact upon the individual and filial psyche. The course will be structured in such as way that the plays being read will begin in the Classical tradition and move through the Post-Modern period of dramatic literature. The course will begin by focusing on the third play in the Theban trilogy, Sophocles’ Antigone, and will explore one woman’s adamant loyalty to her brother in the face of her stern uncle. Aristophanes’ Lysistrata will follow and will explore, from a comedic perspective, the transgression of wives against their husbands in time of war. The Roman comedy, The Mother-in-Law, written by Terence, deals with the problems brought on by arranged marriages. The anonymously written medieval play, The Second Shepherd’s Play presents the marriage of Mak and Gil who suffer for their swindling ways. Another anonymous play, Arden of Faversham, kicks off the Renaissance plays for the course; it is considered the first “domestic tragedy” written in the English language. Two very divergent views of domesticity will be analyzed in Shakespeare’s King Lear, a tragedy, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a romance. The great 18th Century French playwright, Moliere, explores emasculation and dominant femininity in The School for Wives. Henrik Ibsen’s 19th Century realist masterpiece, A Doll’s House, focuses on the husband’s degradation of the wife and her shocking betrayal of it. George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession follows Ibsen and focuses on the tense revelations that threaten to tear a mother and daughter apart. The course concludes with Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, which relocates tragedy to the sphere of the common man. Course evaluation methods will include several reading responses, a performance review, a Midterm and a Final examination, and a final research essay.
Dr. Heidi Sjostrom 1003 MWF 12:00-12:50 Characters, Conflicts and Culture A play that continues to engage hearts and intellects has strong characters facing internal and external conflicts - with people, the devil, the rules, or the void. Each play is also a portrait of a culture and a history. We will progress historically through the major literary periods and emphasize characters, their conflicts, and their times. We'll also introduce several different lenses, or critical techniques, for finding deeper meanings and internal contradictions. We'll discuss what the plays teach us about life and relationships, and, often, we'll watch recordings of crucial scenes. For fun, you'll even write one very short scene. --Two multiple choice exams, daily 3-item reading quizzes, three short papers, and one short scene. Textbooks - The Longman Anthology of Drama and Theater: A Global Perspective, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams Faust: Part One by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Stephanie Stella 1004 MWF 1:00-1:50 In this course, students will receive training in the understanding, appreciation, and criticism of drama. We will survey the development of drama in the Western literary tradition, starting in ancient Greece and ending in the contemporary theatre. Our focus will be on both the literary conventions/structures and the social functions of dramatic works. Students will experience drama's ability to express the most complex feelings and concerns of human beings as individuals, as family members, and as members of society. Class members will participate in, attend, and review dramatic performances.
Dr. Mary Beth Tallon 1005 TUTH 9:35-10:50 1006 TUTH 11:00-12:15 “The Plays the Thing…” …wherein our consciousness is caught, drawing us to question not only the characters in the “world of the play” but ourselves as well. We will use the code of Aristotle’s Poetics to probe the secrets of plays that span theatre history from Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex to Wilson’s Fences. We will test Aristotle’s idea of “catharsis” — do we cry? do we laugh? — by attending, as a class, four productions: The Heidi Chronicles , a contemporary comedy/drama by Wendy Wasserstein at Marquette’s own Helfaer Theatre (including a tour of the theatre facility and a conversation with students involved in the production); The Cherry Orchard, a modern tragi-comedy by Anton Chekov at the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre (our evening there includes “Rep in Depth” and a backstage tour); and the Kevin Branagh films of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing — striking examples, back to back, of tragedy and comedy. Having focused on Aristotle’s study of plot, we will also look at the importance of character development in modern drama: we will invite characters from A Raisin in the Sun to tell us their back stories and do a Keirsey analysis of the personalities in A Doll House. Assessment is based on twelve, five-minute quizzes; two exams; two critiques; a text/production comparison analysis; and on class participation. There will be several possibilities for extra credit across the semester.
English 044: Introduction to Literature; Poetry 3 semester hours An introduction to poetry from variety of traditions. Emphasis on close reading of poems to learn how formal techniques of verse (e.g., symbolism, metaphor, simile, imagery, persona, meter, rhythm) combine for poetic effect. Offered every term. Prereq: ENGL 1 or equiv. and ENGL 2 or equiv.
Professor M.C Bodden 1001 MW 1:00-2:15 This Introduction to Poetry course has four aims: 1) to acquaint you with the variety and range of poems by poets from broad perspectives of culture, history, race, gender and sexuality. 2) To become familiar with different forms of poetry: sonnet, blues stanza, ballad, lyric, free verse, terza rima, the villanelle, etc. 3) To develop the your knowledge of literary critical methods enabling you to read and to evaluate what makes good poetry, and 4) to develop skills of critical thinking through writing and close reading of these poems. For example, along with analyzing forty-some poems in class, the students themselves undertake writing poems using the internal elements (tone, rhythm, meter, figures of speech, images) as a means of learning through writing. Two essay-exams, quizzes, mid-term and final exams, and writing project.

University Core Literature Courses

ENGL 23—Introduction to American Literature 2

3 sem. hrs.

Continuation of ENGL 22, following the development of British literature from the late 18th century to the present. Approaches vary with instructor; authors
studied are likely to include Austen, the Brontës, G. Eliot, Joyce, Shaw, the Shelleys, Tennyson, Woolf, and Wordsworth.

Typically offered spring term.

Prereq: ENGL 1 or equiv. and ENGL 2 or equivalent

Dr. Julia Chavez

1003 MW 2:25-3:40

Literary Wanderers

The wanderer—a frequently appearing character in literature—forces us to question social and cultural norms by deviating from the expectations of a perceived mainstream culture. In this course, we will examine an array of wanderers in works of poetry and fiction from the late eighteenth century to the present in order to better understand those works and the major literary movements in this time frame. Examining the trope of wandering in a variety of forms—temporal, spatial, cultural, aesthetic, imaginative—we will consider the following questions: What attitudes about wandering do Romantic, Victorian, Modern, and Postmodern texts embody? What role does wandering play in the cultural imagination of each period? How do these issues relate to ideas about the relationship between an individual and society? How do the texts of each period “wander” from established literary conventions? Our goal will be to trace a historical line of wanderers from the 18th century to the present in an effort to see continuities and discontinuities between some of the most intriguing and influential works of literature produced by Romantic, Victorian, Modern, and Postmodern writers.

ENGL 033—Introduction to American Literature 2

Continuation of ENGL 32, following the development of American literature from the Civil War to the present. Approaches vary with instructor; authors studied are likely to include Bishop, Cather, Chopin, T.S. Eliot, Ellison, Erdrich, Faulkner, Freeman, Frost, Gilman, Hemingway, Hughes, Hurston, James, Jewett, Morrison, O’Connor, Pound, Stein, Twain, Wharton, and Wright.
Typically offered spring term.

Prereq: ENGL 1 or equiv. and ENGL 2 or equiv.

Dr. Dana Edwards Produehl

1001 MWF 9:00-9:50

"What Makes American Literature American?"

The thematic focus of this class will be questions of American-ness. Aside from geographic constraints and patriotic identification, how do we define America, and the literature of America? Is American-ness racialized? Is it gendered? What themes come out in American literature that give you possible answers to these, and similar, questions? To move toward possible answers, we will be reading and discussing a broad range of genres: novels, short stories, essays, poetry, and drama. We will also be reading a diverse range of authors including those from the mainstream as well as the periphery. My hope is that you come to understand the complexity of American literature, and that you engage with such complexity throughout your writing assignments.

Fr. Ron Bieganowski, S.J.

1005 TTH 12:35-1:50

"What does it mean to be American?"

This course will trace the outlines of the continuing story of what it means to be American as told in fiction, drama, and poetry by Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Edith Wharton, Henry James, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, Lorraine Hansberry, Robert Frost, Gwendolyn Brooks, Flannery O’Connor, James Baldwin, and Bernard Malamud, along with others such as Denise Levertov, T. S. Eliot, and Edward Albee. Readings will include Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, “Daisy Miller,” The Glass Menagerie, The Hairy Ape, “The Bear,” “Big Two-Hearted River,” and “Sonny’s Blues.” The diverse range of action, characters, setting, narrative perspective and sequence, irony, and imagery — all help tell the story. Two papers (4-5 pp.), several “Reflections” (1 p. each), a few quizzes, and final exam (essay) will be required. Discussion format.

English 042: Introduction to Loterature; Fiction

3 semester hours

An introduction to various types of fiction (e.g., fable, short story, novel) representing a range of cultural perspectives with emphasis on techniques for analyzing the conventions, structure and style of fiction.

Offered every term.

Prereq: ENGL 1 or equiv. and ENGL 2 or equiv.

Dr. Barbara Glore

1001 MWF 8:00-8:50

Navigating Cultural Constructs

In this class, we will engage in a shared inquiry of classic and contemporary literary works that are preoccupied with characters in the search for their personal identity. In noting how these characters navigate sometimes hostile settings, we will be attentive to the ways that cultural differences of race, gender, and ethnicity can add to social difficulties as well. As a way of shining a light on our readings, we will explore basic literary theories in order to approach the works through a variety of lenses. To paraphrase the English critic Terry Eagleton, constructing identity can be self-serving; oftentimes, the coping skills required of characters in fiction are the same skills required of all of us when dealing with everyday life. In this way, as we explore these works of fiction together, we will strive to find meaning in the text and to learn more about ourselves, others, and the intersection of the two in the world.

Professor Steve Hartman Keiser

1002 MWF 9:00-9:50

The Axe and the Frozen Sea
Our primary goal is to encounter and enjoy important works of fiction. Good stories touch us at our truest core, spurring us to reflect on and reassess our lives: what it means to be—and what it means to be responsible for our choices in speaking and acting. Franz Kafka said, “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” In this course we will learn to become better axe-wielders. One way we will do this is by looking at the remarkable variation in the English language around the world and how authors use this to build their stories and characters.

Dr. Donna Foran

1003 MWF 11:00 - 11:50

Fiction 042, Section 1003 will include for textbooks, "The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 7th edition, "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens; "A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway; "Mother Night" by Kurt Vonnegut, and "A Long Way Down" by Nick Hornby. There will be four tests including the final, each worth 20% of the grade, two formal papers, each worth 10% of the grade, and 10 reaction papers to the short stories and novels assigned, 5 due before the mid and 5 due after the mid and before the final.

Sr. Bernadette Prochaska

1004 TUTH 11:00-12:15

Fiction with a World View

This course, Introduction to Fiction 042.1004 examines the literature and perspectives expressed by writers from America, Ireland, England, Spain, Russia, and beyond. The student is invited to explore the multiple landscapes of the imagination which are engaged by writers who present various global cultures and mores. Besides the fiction of Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, and Willa Cather, the works studied by the students include Leo Tolstoy, Joseph Conrad, Franz Kafka, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, James Joyce, Isaac Beshavis Singer and others. The vast world of fiction incorporates a marvelous and enriching human journey with its quests and obstacles, its glamorous visions, and its disastrous misfortunes, a journey that we all share.

Dr. Erik Ankerberg

1005 TUTH 12:35-1;50

Fiction and the Quest for Beauty

This course explores the extent to which fiction allows us to recuperate the notion of beauty as a value. As we read significant works of fiction by writers such as Hawthorne, James, Kafka, Mansfield, and Tolstoy we will consider how different writers define beauty, as well as the consequences of those definitions for us as readers. We will also explore the means by which authors employ literary elements to create or, in some cases, destroy the beautiful.

Professor Diane Long Hoeveler

1006 TUTH 2:00-3:15

Mystery, Romance, Horror, Science Fiction

This course will introduce you to the basics of how to read and interpret fiction by focusing on a variety of popular fictional genres: the mystery or detective novel, the woman’s romance, the horror story, and science fiction. Specifically, we will be investigating how the detective genre produces and/or undermines notions of coherent, knowable identities and how the act of interpretive reading mimics the process of investigation and probe that characterizes the Detective himself. We will be reading short stories and novels about Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan, and Hannibal Lecter. Romance and Horror works will interrogate how our culture has constructed notions of seductive sameness and otherness, while the SF works we will read will examine how fantasy formations operate in imagining the future. Two papers, a take home midterm, and a take home final are the requirements for this course.

Professor Sarah Wadsworth

1007 TUTH 3:35 - 4:50

The Art of Reading Fiction

To the aspiring writer of fiction, Henry James, a master of the art of fiction, offered two bits of advice. First, he urged, “Write from experience and experience only.” Second, he added, “Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!” In this course, you will read a wide range of short fiction by writers who seem to have done just that and done it extraordinarily well. Yet the course will focus as much on the experience of the reader as on the experiences conveyed through the writing of fiction. Emphasizing practical analytical skills as well as a range of theoretical approaches, this course is designed to train students to become the kinds of readers on whom nothing is lost.

English 043: Introduction to Literature; Drama

3 semester hours

An Introduction to the forms and principles of drama, often surveying its development from its origins in ancient Greece to the contemporary theater, with emphasis on techniques for analyzing the conventions, structures and styles of dramatic literature. Class will typically read works from a number of centuries and study authors from continental, British and American traditions. Classes usually include at least one play by Shakespeare.

Offered every term.

Prereq: ENGL 1 or equiv. and ENGL 2 or equiv.

Dr. Jason Nado

1001 MWF 9:00-9:50

The Drama of Domesticity

This course will examine how the domestic sphere is presented in dramatic works throughout the Seven Great Ages of Drama. The course will begin by exploring the question, “What is domesticity?” The goal of the course is to continue arriving at an answer to this question by focusing on the social, economic, and political consequences of the domestic on the lives of characters from a multitude of backgrounds. Relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, and siblings will be read and analyzed to come to terms with domesticity and its impact upon the individual and filial psyche. The course will be structured in such as way that the plays being read will begin in the Classical tradition and move through the Post-Modern period of dramatic literature. The course will begin by focusing on the third play in the Theban trilogy, Sophocles’ Antigone, and will explore one woman’s adamant loyalty to her brother in the face of her stern uncle. Aristophanes’ Lysistrata will follow and will explore, from a comedic perspective, the transgression of wives against their husbands in time of war. The Roman comedy, The Mother-in-Law, written by Terence, deals with the problems brought on by arranged marriages. The anonymously written medieval play, The Second Shepherd’s Play presents the marriage of Mak and Gil who suffer for their swindling ways. Another anonymous play, Arden of Faversham, kicks off the Renaissance plays for the course; it is considered the first “domestic tragedy” written in the English language. Two very divergent views of domesticity will be analyzed in Shakespeare’s King Lear, a tragedy, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a romance. The great 18th Century French playwright, Moliere, explores emasculation and dominant femininity in The School for Wives. Henrik Ibsen’s 19th Century realist masterpiece, A Doll’s House, focuses on the husband’s degradation of the wife and her shocking betrayal of it. George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession follows Ibsen and focuses on the tense revelations that threaten to tear a mother and daughter apart. The course concludes with Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, which relocates tragedy to the sphere of the common man. Course evaluation methods will include several reading responses, a performance review, a Midterm and a Final examination, and a final research essay.

Dr. Heidi Sjostrom

1003 MWF 12:00-12:50

Characters, Conflicts and Culture

A play that continues to engage hearts and intellects has strong characters facing internal and external conflicts - with people, the devil, the rules, or the void. Each play is also a portrait of a culture and a history. We will progress historically through the major literary periods and emphasize characters, their conflicts, and their times. We'll also introduce several different lenses, or critical techniques, for finding deeper meanings and internal contradictions. We'll discuss what the plays teach us about life and relationships, and, often, we'll watch recordings of crucial scenes. For fun, you'll even write one very short scene. --Two multiple choice exams, daily 3-item reading quizzes, three short papers, and one short scene.

Textbooks - The Longman Anthology of Drama and Theater: A Global Perspective, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams Faust: Part One by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Stephanie Stella

1004 MWF 1:00-1:50

In this course, students will receive training in the understanding, appreciation, and criticism of drama. We will survey the development of drama in the Western literary tradition, starting in ancient Greece and ending in the contemporary theatre. Our focus will be on both the literary conventions/structures and the social functions of dramatic works. Students will experience drama's ability to express the most complex feelings and concerns of human beings as individuals, as family members, and as members of society. Class members will participate in, attend, and review dramatic performances.

Dr. Mary Beth Tallon

1005 TUTH 9:35-10:50
1006 TUTH 11:00-12:15

“The Plays the Thing…”

…wherein our consciousness is caught, drawing us to question not only the characters in the “world of the play” but ourselves as well. We will use the code of Aristotle’s Poetics to probe the secrets of plays that span theatre history from Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex to Wilson’s Fences. We will test Aristotle’s idea of “catharsis” — do we cry? do we laugh? — by attending, as a class, four productions: The Heidi Chronicles , a contemporary comedy/drama by Wendy Wasserstein at Marquette’s own Helfaer Theatre (including a tour of the theatre facility and a conversation with students involved in the production); The Cherry Orchard, a modern tragi-comedy by Anton Chekov at the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre (our evening there includes “Rep in Depth” and a backstage tour); and the Kevin Branagh films of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing — striking examples, back to back, of tragedy and comedy. Having focused on Aristotle’s study of plot, we will also look at the importance of character development in modern drama: we will invite characters from A Raisin in the Sun to tell us their back stories and do a Keirsey analysis of the personalities in A Doll House. Assessment is based on twelve, five-minute quizzes; two exams; two critiques; a text/production comparison analysis; and on class participation. There will be several possibilities for extra credit across the semester.

English 044: Introduction to Literature; Poetry

3 semester hours

An introduction to poetry from variety of traditions. Emphasis on close reading of poems to learn how formal techniques of verse (e.g., symbolism, metaphor, simile, imagery, persona, meter, rhythm) combine for poetic effect.

Offered every term.

Prereq: ENGL 1 or equiv. and ENGL 2 or equiv.

Professor M.C Bodden

1001 MW 1:00-2:15

This Introduction to Poetry course has four aims: 1) to acquaint you with the variety and range of poems by poets from broad perspectives of culture, history, race, gender and sexuality. 2) To become familiar with different forms of poetry: sonnet, blues stanza, ballad, lyric, free verse, terza rima, the villanelle, etc. 3) To develop the your knowledge of literary critical methods enabling you to read and to evaluate what makes good poetry, and 4) to develop skills of critical thinking through writing and close reading of these poems. For example, along with analyzing forty-some poems in class, the students themselves undertake writing poems using the internal elements (tone, rhythm, meter, figures of speech, images) as a means of learning through writing. Two essay-exams, quizzes, mid-term and final exams, and writing project.

Upper Divistion Courses
English 101: History of the English Language Professor Tim Machan 1001 MWF 9:00 This course examines the history and diversity of the English language. After an introduction to the methods of historical and comparative linguistics, the development of English will be chronologically considered. Much of the course will concentrate on specific historical topics, such as the introduction of writing, the influence of writing and printing on the standardization of English, the spread of English outside England itself, the diversity of English, and the status of English as a world language today.
English 104: Advanced Composition Professor Aesha Adams-Roberts 1001 MWF 10:00 1002 MWF 12:00 According to Jacqueline Jones Royster, the essay is “one type of literate action.” In this workshop/discussion course, we will explore the use of essays for sociopolitical action, examining in particular how essayists engage the world around them, at times calling their audiences to action, at times using their personal reflections to challenge our beliefs and behaviors. Because African American women essayists have an interesting and long-standing tradition of using essays for sociopolitical action, we will focus our studies on their essays. You will be asked to write your own essays on topics you choose that range from personal reflection to political advocacy and activism. Along the way we will sharpen our rhetorical decision-making skills, learning how to employ language in ways that will move audiences. At the end of the semester, I hope we will produce a class magazine that includes one piece of writing from each class member. This limited edition publication will be edited and produced by class members. We’ll decide whether you want to do this magazine electronically or on paper. If paper, $10 per person should cover the cost of printing two copies each. We’ll decide soon after Spring Break, then determine production responsibilities, a budget, and a calendar.
English 105: Writing for the Professions Professor Rebecca Nowacek 1001 MWF 11:00 In this workshop / discussion course, we will study professional writing with an emphasis on audience analysis. We will focus on rhetorical strategies for writing letters, memos, proposals, summaries, resumes, reports, and oral presentations. We will also focus on developing the collaborative writing abilities so often required of professionals and technical writers at every stage of the writing process: brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading. Writing assignments will likely be connected to work done for a campus or community group.
English 106: The Art of Rhetoric: Theory and Application Professor Kris Ratcliffe 1001 TUTH 12:35-1:50 Political/Cultural/Literary/Visual/Pedagogical Rhetorics This semester we will explore the Greek goddess of persuasion, Peitho (translated, “I believe”). This course asks students to study multiple definitions of rhetoric, learn rhetorical concepts/tactics, and employ these concepts/tactics to rhetorically analyze people, texts, and culture as well as to compose written, oral, and visual texts. In Unit 1: Political Rhetorics, we will analyze/write about current political texts via the enthymeme, identification, historical moment, and technological delivery systems. In Unit 2: Cultural Rhetorics, we will analyze/write about St. John de Crevecoeur's 1782 diaries and Gloria Anzaldua's 1992 poetry via cultural position, subject position, mestiza consciousness, and cross-cultural communication. In Unit 3: Literary Rhetorics, we will analyze/write about fiction by Virginia Woolf and Louise Erdrich and poetry by William Shakespeare and William Butler Yeats via multiple levels of author and audience, sentence style, and poststructuralist uses of figurative language. In Unit 4: Visual Rhetorics, we will analyze/write about Persepolis (an award-winning graphic novel about the 1979 Iranian Revolution) via image/word technique, effect, and desire. In Unit 5: Pedagogical Rhetorics, we will analyze/write about our prior learning experiences (in school and out) via Quintilian's "good man" theory, post/process composition theory, and rhetorical listening. Assignments include: 3 informal position papers; 2 formal essays, 1 collaborative oral presentation with visuals, and 1 final exam.
English Literature to 1500 Professor M.C. Bodden 1001 MW 2:25-3:40 Beowulf to Gawain The course will provide a brief introduction to Old English literature: Beowulf, “The Wife’s Lament,” and “The Wanderer.” Middle English literature includes Dante’s Purgatorio (portions of it), Pearl Anonymous, Tristan and Iseult, Gawain and the Green Knight, Malory’s Morte Darthur and, if time, a Sundance Festival award winning film encoded with medieval themes, especially the figure of the Intruder Hero. We’ll begin by looking at the poetic techniques of Old English poetry, the concept of kingship, the nature of the Intruder Hero, the medieval theory of knowledge, the nature of obsessive love, comedic love, and courtly love. In the second half of the course, we’ll examine the way that both men and women contested the inherited social, political and sexual codes which shaped their identities. Pearl Anonymous will be read in bi-lingual edition of Middle English and Modern English.
English 121: The Age of Johnson Professor Steve Karian 1001 TUTH 9:35-10:50 This course will focus on two major aspects of British literature in the latter half of the eighteenth century: the rise of the novel and the career of Samuel Johnson. We will read major novels that cover a wide range of themes and generic modes. Possibilities include: Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Charlotte Lennox’s Female Quixote, Frances Burney’s Evelina, and others. We will also examine Samuel Johnson’s varied literary output, including poems, periodical essays, fiction, biographies, and critical prefaces. Discussion of Johnson would be incomplete without also discussing his biographer James Boswell, and so we will read excerpts from Boswell’s public biography of Johnson as well as from his private diaries. Course requirements will include active class participation, an essay that responds to a critical debate, a formal presentation, and a research paper (15 pages).
English 130: The Romantic Period Professor Diane Hoeveler 1001 TUTH 11:00-12:15 Race, class and gender have emerged during the past two decades as central to the study of the literature of the British Romantic period. This class examines the major Romantic texts in relation to a complex of issues--authorial voice, imagery patterns, symbolism, structuring principles, and ideological configurations--that can be read differently when one takes race, class, and gender into consideration. More specifically, we will examine the issues of slavery and abolition, the class anxieties caused by rapid industrialization and economic growth, and the use of the feminine as a representation in texts written by Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron, and Shelley. We will also read poetry, dramas, and prose written by the women who were writing at the same time--Hemans, Landon, Baillie, and More. Some of the novels or longer works that we will read will include Jane Austen’s Emma, Mary Shelley’s Mathilda, and Olaudah Equiano’s Narrative of his slavery and escape. Requirements include an avid interest in sharing your ideas and insights with the class, a take-home midterm and final exam, and two research/interpretive papers.
English 147: Post Colonial Literature Professor Lauren Mason 1001 MW 1:00-2:15 The "Other" Global Village This course explores how contemporary postcolonial discourse reflects and engages globalization. In this context, globalization refers not only to what Thomas Friedman famously terms “the flattening” of the world, but also to the rise of hypertechnology, mass media, mass urbanization, migration, and visual culture. Contemporary postcolonial writers and filmmakers seem increasingly eager to explore the intersections between the postcolony and globalization in their work. In novels such as Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco, and Chris Abani’s Graceland, postcolonial identity and culture is negotiated through a global lens. Characters often feel a sense of displacement as they find themselves navigating changing urban landscapes, multiple national/ ethnic identities, and mass-mediated images of themselves. On the other hand, films such as City of God (2002) and Children of Men (2006) demonstrate the ways that mass-media itself has become an expressive platform for postcolonial discourse. In between the novels and films, we will explore some short documentaries as well as photographic images and popular music, all of which show the various ways that visual/ media culture functions as a modern postcolonial “text” with global reach.
English 152: American Literature from 1865-1914 Professor Sarah Wadsworth 1001 TUTH 12:35-1:50 Beginning with the corruption and excesses of the Gilded Age and ending in the midst of the Progressive Era, the decades between the close of the Civil War and the First World War ushered in the expansion of the West, followed by the “closing” of the frontier; the increasing urbanization and industrialization of American society; and new possibilities as well as pressing challenges for women, African Americans, immigrants, and workers in the face of entrenched prejudice and recurrent violence. This course explores the literature and culture of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era through a generous selection of novels and short stories. We will examine competing theories of fiction, including realism and naturalism, as well as a range of approaches to regionalism and the nascent modernism of the early twentieth century. Authors to be studied include Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Henry James, Charles W. Chesnutt, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sui Sin Far, Constance Fenimore Woolson, Sarah Orne Jewett, Jack London, and Stephen Crane. In addition to substantial readings, students should expect to complete two formal essays, a final exam, and several brief reflection papers.
English 158: American Drama Professor Rebecca Nowacek 1001 MWF 12:00- 12:50 [NOTE NEW TIME] The American Musical The Broadway musical is a distinctly American genre. It’s also a particularly telling lens through which to examine changing attitudes towards gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. This course, while broad in its chronological scope, is not a survey course. Instead we will focus on a handful of American musicals, examining their scripts, songs, and stagings to better understand (a) how the American musical emerged as a genre in the “Golden Age” of the 1940s and 50s and (b) how these musicals embody changing and often conflicted ideas about gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and what it means to be American. Together we will focus on five musicals, mostly likely Show Boat, Oklahoma!, South Pacific, Cabaret, and Ragtime. Each student will be assigned an additional musical to research and write on throughout the semester. Assignments may include a close analysis of a single song, a comparison of the musical and its source material, an analysis of a particular staging of a musical (ideally live, perhaps on film), and will culminate in a longer analysis of one musical in its historical and cultural context. All students will be required to view movie versions of the musicals; students are invited to attend screenings on Wednesday afternoons (starting around 2:30), but the videos can also be checked out from the Raynor Reserve Desk. Questions? Feel free to e-mail the instructor.
English 160: Shakespeares Major Plays Professor John Curran 1001 MWF 11:00 - 11:50 This course is an introduction to Shakespeare’s art and some of its major themes. The course will include representatives of Shakespeare’ four major dramatic genres, comedy, romance, history, and tragedy: A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, Measure for Measure, As You Like It, The Tempest, Richard II, 1 Henry IV, Macbeth, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, and King Lear. Students will be expected to come prepared to discuss specific problems they discern in the plays, read passages aloud in class, and serve as discussion leaders on at least three occasions. Further assignments will include three analytic papers (5 pages each) and a final exam.
Professor Amelia Zurcher 1002 MW 1:00 - 2:15 In this course we’ll read plays representative of each of the four major genres (comedy, history, tragedy, and romance). We’ll pay close attention to the plays’ cultural and historical context, as well as their language and themes, and we will also consider issues of performance. Requirements will include two essays, a midterm and final, and a small group project.
Professor Tom Jeffers 1003 TUTH 3:35 - 4:50 In this section of Shakespeare, we will read Hamlet, I Henry IV, King Lear, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, and many of the sonnets. Too, we will attend to some of the cultural aftershocks of Shakespeare’s work in art, music, and modes of theatrical performance. Students will write some short papers and make in-class reports.
English 165: Individual Author Professor Amelia Zurcher 1001 MW 3:50-5:05 Sidney Family Philip Sidney – late sixteenth-century writer, diplomat, soldier and courtier – has been a central figure in the canon of British literature since he was first published; in the last couple of decades, his siblings Mary Sidney Herbert and Robert Sidney and his niece Mary Sidney Wroth have joined him there. As a family the Sidneys were close and intensely collaborative, and together their writings provide a fascinating case study for inquiry into early modern court life and politics, family relations, education for both men and women, sex and marriage, and literary culture. In this course we’ll examine both the literature itself and the cultural beliefs, assumptions and practices in which it was embedded. Among the works we’ll read are Philip Sidney’s Defense of Poetry, his innovatory sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella, and his prose romance Arcadia (the most popular work of fiction in England for more than a century); Mary Sidney’s translation of the Psalms and of Seneca’s play Antonie; Robert Sidney’s lyric verse; and Mary Wroth’s prose romance Urania and her sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, both direct responses to the work of her uncle. We’ll also read poetry and drama by some of the members of the literary circle Mary Sidney hosted at her house, and to conclude we’ll consider a few of the post-Wroth continuations of Arcadia. Requirements will include several short papers as part of an electronic class conversation, one long essay, and a midterm and final.
Professor Al Rivero 1002 TTH 9:35-10:50 Jane Austen We will read and discuss all of Jane Austen’s novels, from the epistolary Lady Susan to the unfinished Sanditon, in various historical and critical contexts. Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able, among other things, to assert with a certain degree of confidence that Pride and Prejudice is actually a book and not just the latest cinematic vehicle for Keira Knightley. Requirements: One oral presentation; one or two essays (ca.10pp.); midterm examination; comprehensive final examination; class participation; and regular attendance.
Professor Sarah Wadsworth 1003 TTH 11:00-12:15 Mark Twain and Friends Humorist and social critic, journalist and fiction writer, business man and artist, world traveler and American regionalist, literary and popular author, a writer who has been regarded as a caustic critic of racism as well as a perpetuator of racial stereotypes, Mark Twain is a writer whose life and work are characterized by seemingly endless contradictions, paradoxes, and controversies. This course offers an in-depth study of Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, one of the most highly praised yet intensely debated figures in our national literature. Focusing on his novels, stories, and sketches, we will investigate his career within the context of the literary circle in which his writing developed as well as the social history that informed his best work and recent criticism that offers new perspectives on canonical texts. Readings will range over the course of Mark Twain’s career, embracing a range of genres and modes, from travel sketches of Europe and the American West, to regional tales of the Old Southwest, and satirical novels and short stories. Texts to be assigned include the collaborative novel The Gilded Age (written with Charles Dudley Warner), along with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Pudd’nhead Wilson, and a generous sampling of Mark Twain’s travel writing, humorous sketches, and short stories. Course readings will also encompass works of fiction by several of his closest associates, including Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, and Charles Dudley Warner. The course will be conducted as a seminar, with a strong emphasis on class discussion. In addition to participating regularly in discussions, each student will complete several brief reflection papers and a research paper.
English 170: Studies in Language Professor Steve Hartman Keiser 1001 MWF 11:00 Language and Social Identity We will examine the relationships between language and social diversity in the general American speech community. Our aim will be to shed light on how individuals and social groups distinguish themselves on the basis of their choice of language, and the presence or absence of shared norms of social evaluation and interpretation. In particular, we will investigate the relationship between language and such social parameters as socioeconomic status, ethnicity, race, and gender. Finally, we will consider the role of language differences in the creation of social stereotypes, and their implications for social advantage or disadvantage. Upon completion of this course you will be able to: Explain why language changes and why dialects exist. Analyze language variation in the subsystems of language: lexicon, phonology, morphology, syntax, and pragmatic Describe the historical development and current status of rule-governed systems of Anglo-American regional dialects and African American English. Critically analyze attitudes toward language varieties in the US and their speakers.
English 171: Studies in Literature and Culture Professor Amy Blair 1001 TUTH 2:00-3:15 American Literary Realism By reading works of American literary “realism” in their original contexts, and by reconsidering the boundaries between realism and romance, this course will allow us to come to a better understanding of the whole culture of the Gilded Age. The period between the end of the Civil War and the beginnings of World War I in Europe was one of profound social, economic, technological, and political changes in the United States. This course will look at a variety of ways American writers reflected and responded to the world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, addressing the waxing and waning popularity of sentimental literature, the elite enthusiasm for realist literature and the related growth of regional literature, the connection between fiction and the muckraking school of journalism, the explosion of literatures by and about immigrants, African American literary production in the eras of Reconstruction and Jim Crow, and the growth of popular periodicals. We will read works by Charles Chesnutt, Theodore Dreiser, William Dean Howells, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Henry James, James Weldon Johnson, Edith Wharton, and others.
English 173: Studies in Genre Professor John Boly 1001 TUTH 9:35-10:50 Dystopian Fiction: Utopia/Dystopia/Heteroptopia Is America run by a hidden and arrogant financial elite? Are politicians their sock-puppets? Could illegal and immoral petro-wars be started on false pretexts so a corrupt few can get rich and herd everyone else into a police state? Is corporate owned news a megaphone for CIA propaganda? Are vaccines and other pharmaceutical drugs delivery systems for diseases like cancer and AIDS? Are water supplies deliberately poisoned by eugenicists intent on reducing the population to morons? If questions like these interest you, then try this course. We will study the connections among three closely related genres: utopia (the desirable place), dystopia (the abject hellhole), and heterotopia (the denied or repressed place). The syllabus will include a broad range of works, from Frank Baum’s beloved children’s tale, The Wizard of Oz, to George Orwell’s vision of a global concentration camp, 1984; from Aldous Huxley’s eugenic paradise, Brave New World, to Margaret Atwood’s nightmare society dictated by women-hating fundamentalists, The Handmaid’s Tale; from Kurt Vonnegut’s slapstick black comedies to Kazuo Ishiguro’s elegant psychological thriller, Never Let Me Go. In addition to these fictional works, we will also look at some of the non-fictional narratives that inspired our novelists. These heterotopias, the repressed histories often dismissed as "conspiracy theories," will give us an opportunity to consider the writings of historians and investigative reporters such as Ida Tarbell, Anthony C. Sutton, Robert Stinnett, and Gary Allen. But the big surprise is that these heterotopians are joined by some unexpected conspiracy theorists: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, both Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Bill Clinton. If recent events leave you questioning the official picture of the world, then utopia, dystopia, and heterotopia are the genres for you.
Professor Angela Sorby 1002 TUTH 11:00-12:15 Children's Literature Children’s literature is not just for children. In this rigorous class, we will read numerous children’s classics from 1780 to 2000; these are likely to include Newbery’s Mother Goose’s Melody, some Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie, Brown’s Goodnight, Moon, S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, and others, including a substantial amount of poetry. We will explore the evolving cultural contexts of these works while also tracing their manifestations in the commercial sphere, including spinoff books, toys, and films. Our aim is to understand how writers, past and present, have imagined childhood as an experience and children as a target audience. Requirements include two exams, a group presentation, some brief position papers, and a longer final paper.
English 177: Studies in Multicultural Literature Professor Jodi Melamed 1001 TUTH 2:00 Race/Literature in Milwaukee after World War II Senior Experience How is it that Milwaukee, Wisconsin, today can be known as both “the All American City” and “The Most Segregated City in Milwaukee”? What makes Milwaukee both a paragon of multicultural America (“Festival City”) and a symbol of the entrenchment of racialized privilege and inequality? Focusing specifically on the post-World War II history and present of racial conflict and cooperation, the course seeks to make the study of race and ethnicity intellectually rigorous and immediately relevant for students at Marquette University. In particular, we will seek to understand racialization – a process that stigmatizes some forms of humanity and privileges others – as a complex factor that has deeply shaped the cultural, economic, political and social fabric of Milwaukee, as well as the experiences and consciousness of all its inhabitants. To do so, we will familiarize ourselves with the global and local histories of the city’s multiple social groups: white, African American, American Indian, Latino/a, Asian and Arab American, and LGBT. Rather than consider these groups as unified and static, we will consider how each undergoes constant change and is constantly hybridized by a multiplicity of other factors, including national origin, class, gender, religion, and sexuality. An equally important focus will be on the interaction between the literary text and the social text (the signs through which we “read” or make meaning of our social world) . In particular, we will examine how literary narrative can reinforce, oppose, or offer alternatives to dominant conceptions of race and racism. We will also put under pressure the conventional idea that “multicultural literature” facilitates transfers of knowledge and experience across cultural divisions, thereby contributing to anti-racist social transformation.
English 186: Studies in Women and Literature Professor Aesha Adams-Roberts 1001 MWF 1:00 African American Women's Spirituality In this class we will explore how spirituality functions in texts authored by African American women. Examining a broad range of literary works from authors such as Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as film and popular media, we will explore how writers resist the traditional dichotomy between spiritual and intellectual knowledge, folk and high culture, and spirituality and institutionalized religion. In particular we will examine how spirituality has aided or hindered African American women in their quest for identity, community, and equality. Requirements include a journal, a group presentation, a Wikipedia article on an author or work of your choice and a final project (non-traditional projects are encouraged!).
English 191: Creative Writing Professor Larry Watson 1001 MW 2:25-3:40 1002 MW 3:50-5:05 Fiction A course in writing fiction, organized as a lecture/workshop. In addition to writing exercises covering the basics of the craft, students will produce 30-40 pages of fiction by the end of the semester. They will also discuss each other’s works and write critical responses to a number of short stories. Text: Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway
Professor Ed Block 1003 TTH 2:00-3:15 Poetry After some initial readings, to get our bearings, this course will be a “workshop” in the writing of various poetic genres. Besides some exercises in perception and description, weekly assignments, to be read aloud and commented upon “in workshop,” will yield a portfolio of work by the end of the semester. The course will involve a good deal of reading aloud, and (perhaps) some memorization.
English 196: Undergraduate Seminar Professor CJ Hribal • 1001 MW 2:25-3:40 Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction Senior Experience “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” So says that great theorist of narrative craft, the filmmaker Mel Brooks. Of course, most of life (and most of the fiction that tries to reflect the complexity of life) falls all along the spectrum between (and including) those two poles. Life is both tragic and comic. Or as the Yiddish proverb has it, “Man plans. God laughs.” This workshop will give students an opportunity to develop narratives that reflect that complexity. Milan Kundera defined the novel as "the great prose form in which an author thoroughly explores, by means of experimental selves [characters], some great themes of existence." Tweak that definition a little to include short fiction as well, and that’s what most fiction writing is about. In this workshop students will develop proficiency with those techniques (many of which they first encountered in ENGL 191) that will help them do that. They’ll also add additional techniques to their repertoire, examine narratives from technical (as well as critical) viewpoints, develop fluency in discussing fiction writing from the practitioner’s viewpoint, and, in general, write better prose and better narratives. In addition to a few writing exercises, students will produce 30 pages of prose fiction by semester’s end (revising a lot of it) and will write a number of short critical annotations concerning assigned readings. TEXTS: The Story Behind The Story, Barrett and Turchi, eds. + student work
English 198: Special Topics in Literature and Writing Professor Tim Machan 1001 MWF 10:00 The Vikings (Cross listed with History- Register 198/1001) This course will be devoted to the history, culture and literature of Scandinavia during the age of the Vikings. Our concerns will be both with the social and political events of the period and with the ways in which medieval Scandinavians used fiction, history, and mythology in order to present and interpret the world in which they lived. The issues that we will consider include Viking religion and mythology, the unification of the individual Scandinavian kingdoms, the Christianization of a heroic warrior culture, the Vikings’ own concerns with history and self-representation, and the raids and colonizing missions that they effected in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the North Atlantic. This course qualifies as a pre-1800 course in English and a category II class in History.

Upper Divistion Courses

English 101: History of the English Language

Professor Tim Machan

1001 MWF 9:00

This course examines the history and diversity of the English language. After an introduction to the methods of historical and comparative linguistics, the development of English will be chronologically considered. Much of the course will concentrate on specific historical topics, such as the introduction of writing, the influence of writing and printing on the standardization of English, the spread of English outside England itself, the diversity of English, and the status of English as a world language today.

English 104: Advanced Composition

Professor Aesha Adams-Roberts

1001 MWF 10:00
1002 MWF 12:00

According to Jacqueline Jones Royster, the essay is “one type of literate action.” In this workshop/discussion course, we will explore the use of essays for sociopolitical action, examining in particular how essayists engage the world around them, at times calling their audiences to action, at times using their personal reflections to challenge our beliefs and behaviors. Because African American women essayists have an interesting and long-standing tradition of using essays for sociopolitical action, we will focus our studies on their essays. You will be asked to write your own essays on topics you choose that range from personal reflection to political advocacy and activism. Along the way we will sharpen our rhetorical decision-making skills, learning how to employ language in ways that will move audiences.

At the end of the semester, I hope we will produce a class magazine that includes one piece of writing from each class member. This limited edition publication will be edited and produced by class members. We’ll decide whether you want to do this magazine electronically or on paper. If paper, $10 per person should cover the cost of printing two copies each. We’ll decide soon after Spring Break, then determine production responsibilities, a budget, and a calendar.

English 105: Writing for the Professions

Professor Rebecca Nowacek

1001 MWF 11:00

In this workshop / discussion course, we will study professional writing with an emphasis on audience analysis. We will focus on rhetorical strategies for writing letters, memos, proposals, summaries, resumes, reports, and oral presentations. We will also focus on developing the collaborative writing abilities so often required of professionals and technical writers at every stage of the writing process: brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading. Writing assignments will likely be connected to work done for a campus or community group.

English 106: The Art of Rhetoric: Theory and Application

Professor Kris Ratcliffe

1001 TUTH 12:35-1:50

Political/Cultural/Literary/Visual/Pedagogical Rhetorics

This semester we will explore the Greek goddess of persuasion, Peitho (translated, “I believe”). This course asks students to study multiple definitions of rhetoric, learn rhetorical concepts/tactics, and employ these concepts/tactics to rhetorically analyze people, texts, and culture as well as to compose written, oral, and visual texts. In Unit 1: Political Rhetorics, we will analyze/write about current political texts via the enthymeme, identification, historical moment, and technological delivery systems. In Unit 2: Cultural Rhetorics, we will analyze/write about St. John de Crevecoeur's 1782 diaries and Gloria Anzaldua's 1992 poetry via cultural position, subject position, mestiza consciousness, and cross-cultural communication. In Unit 3: Literary Rhetorics, we will analyze/write about fiction by Virginia Woolf and Louise Erdrich and poetry by William Shakespeare and William Butler Yeats via multiple levels of author and audience, sentence style, and poststructuralist uses of figurative language. In Unit 4: Visual Rhetorics, we will analyze/write about Persepolis (an award-winning graphic novel about the 1979 Iranian Revolution) via image/word technique, effect, and desire. In Unit 5: Pedagogical Rhetorics, we will analyze/write about our prior learning experiences (in school and out) via Quintilian's "good man" theory, post/process composition theory, and rhetorical listening. Assignments include: 3 informal position papers; 2 formal essays, 1 collaborative oral presentation with visuals, and 1 final exam.

English Literature to 1500

Professor M.C. Bodden

1001 MW 2:25-3:40

Beowulf to Gawain

The course will provide a brief introduction to Old English literature: Beowulf, “The Wife’s Lament,” and “The Wanderer.” Middle English literature includes Dante’s Purgatorio (portions of it), Pearl Anonymous, Tristan and Iseult, Gawain and the Green Knight, Malory’s Morte Darthur and, if time, a Sundance Festival award winning film encoded with medieval themes, especially the figure of the Intruder Hero. We’ll begin by looking at the poetic techniques of Old English poetry, the concept of kingship, the nature of the Intruder Hero, the medieval theory of knowledge, the nature of obsessive love, comedic love, and courtly love. In the second half of the course, we’ll examine the way that both men and women contested the inherited social, political and sexual codes which shaped their identities. Pearl Anonymous will be read in bi-lingual edition of Middle English and Modern English.

English 121: The Age of Johnson

Professor Steve Karian

1001 TUTH 9:35-10:50

This course will focus on two major aspects of British literature in the latter half of the eighteenth century: the rise of the novel and the career of Samuel Johnson. We will read major novels that cover a wide range of themes and generic modes. Possibilities include: Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Charlotte Lennox’s Female Quixote, Frances Burney’s Evelina, and others. We will also examine Samuel Johnson’s varied literary output, including poems, periodical essays, fiction, biographies, and critical prefaces. Discussion of Johnson would be incomplete without also discussing his biographer James Boswell, and so we will read excerpts from Boswell’s public biography of Johnson as well as from his private diaries. Course requirements will include active class participation, an essay that responds to a critical debate, a formal presentation, and a research paper (15 pages).

English 130: The Romantic Period

Professor Diane Hoeveler

1001 TUTH 11:00-12:15

Race, class and gender have emerged during the past two decades as central to the study of the literature of the British Romantic period. This class examines the major Romantic texts in relation to a complex of issues--authorial voice, imagery patterns, symbolism, structuring principles, and ideological configurations--that can be read differently when one takes race, class, and gender into consideration. More specifically, we will examine the issues of slavery and abolition, the class anxieties caused by rapid industrialization and economic growth, and the use of the feminine as a representation in texts written by Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron, and Shelley. We will also read poetry, dramas, and prose written by the women who were writing at the same time--Hemans, Landon, Baillie, and More. Some of the novels or longer works that we will read will include Jane Austen’s Emma, Mary Shelley’s Mathilda, and Olaudah Equiano’s Narrative of his slavery and escape. Requirements include an avid interest in sharing your ideas and insights with the class, a take-home midterm and final exam, and two research/interpretive papers.

English 147: Post Colonial Literature

Professor Lauren Mason

1001 MW 1:00-2:15

The "Other" Global Village

This course explores how contemporary postcolonial discourse reflects and engages globalization. In this context, globalization refers not only to what Thomas Friedman famously terms “the flattening” of the world, but also to the rise of hypertechnology, mass media, mass urbanization, migration, and visual culture. Contemporary postcolonial writers and filmmakers seem increasingly eager to explore the intersections between the postcolony and globalization in their work. In novels such as Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco, and Chris Abani’s Graceland, postcolonial identity and culture is negotiated through a global lens. Characters often feel a sense of displacement as they find themselves navigating changing urban landscapes, multiple national/ ethnic identities, and mass-mediated images of themselves. On the other hand, films such as City of God (2002) and Children of Men (2006) demonstrate the ways that mass-media itself has become an expressive platform for postcolonial discourse. In between the novels and films, we will explore some short documentaries as well as photographic images and popular music, all of which show the various ways that visual/ media culture functions as a modern postcolonial “text” with global reach.

English 152: American Literature from 1865-1914

Professor Sarah Wadsworth

1001 TUTH 12:35-1:50

Beginning with the corruption and excesses of the Gilded Age and ending in the midst of the Progressive Era, the decades between the close of the Civil War and the First World War ushered in the expansion of the West, followed by the “closing” of the frontier; the increasing urbanization and industrialization of American society; and new possibilities as well as pressing challenges for women, African Americans, immigrants, and workers in the face of entrenched prejudice and recurrent violence. This course explores the literature and culture of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era through a generous selection of novels and short stories. We will examine competing theories of fiction, including realism and naturalism, as well as a range of approaches to regionalism and the nascent modernism of the early twentieth century. Authors to be studied include Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Henry James, Charles W. Chesnutt, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sui Sin Far, Constance Fenimore Woolson, Sarah Orne Jewett, Jack London, and Stephen Crane. In addition to substantial readings, students should expect to complete two formal essays, a final exam, and several brief reflection papers.

English 158: American Drama

Professor Rebecca Nowacek

1001 MWF 12:00- 12:50 [NOTE NEW TIME]

The American Musical

The Broadway musical is a distinctly American genre. It’s also a particularly telling lens through which to examine changing attitudes towards gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. This course, while broad in its chronological scope, is not a survey course. Instead we will focus on a handful of American musicals, examining their scripts, songs, and stagings to better understand (a) how the American musical emerged as a genre in the “Golden Age” of the 1940s and 50s and (b) how these musicals embody changing and often conflicted ideas about gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and what it means to be American. Together we will focus on five musicals, mostly likely Show Boat, Oklahoma!, South Pacific, Cabaret, and Ragtime. Each student will be assigned an additional musical to research and write on throughout the semester. Assignments may include a close analysis of a single song, a comparison of the musical and its source material, an analysis of a particular staging of a musical (ideally live, perhaps on film), and will culminate in a longer analysis of one musical in its historical and cultural context. All students will be required to view movie versions of the musicals; students are invited to attend screenings on Wednesday afternoons (starting around 2:30), but the videos can also be checked out from the Raynor Reserve Desk. Questions? Feel free to e-mail the instructor.

English 160: Shakespeares Major Plays

Professor John Curran

1001 MWF 11:00 - 11:50

This course is an introduction to Shakespeare’s art and some of its major themes. The course will include representatives of Shakespeare’ four major dramatic genres, comedy, romance, history, and tragedy: A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, Measure for Measure, As You Like It, The Tempest, Richard II, 1 Henry IV, Macbeth, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, and King Lear. Students will be expected to come prepared to discuss specific problems they discern in the plays, read passages aloud in class, and serve as discussion leaders on at least three occasions. Further assignments will include three analytic papers (5 pages each) and a final exam.

Professor Amelia Zurcher

1002 MW 1:00 - 2:15

In this course we’ll read plays representative of each of the four major genres (comedy, history, tragedy, and romance). We’ll pay close attention to the plays’ cultural and historical context, as well as their language and themes, and we will also consider issues of performance. Requirements will include two essays, a midterm and final, and a small group project.

Professor Tom Jeffers

1003 TUTH 3:35 - 4:50

In this section of Shakespeare, we will read Hamlet, I Henry IV, King Lear, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, and many of the sonnets. Too, we will attend to some of the cultural aftershocks of Shakespeare’s work in art, music, and modes of theatrical performance. Students will write some short papers and make in-class reports.

English 165: Individual Author

Professor Amelia Zurcher

1001 MW 3:50-5:05

Sidney Family

Philip Sidney – late sixteenth-century writer, diplomat, soldier and courtier – has been a central figure in the canon of British literature since he was first published; in the last couple of decades, his siblings Mary Sidney Herbert and Robert Sidney and his niece Mary Sidney Wroth have joined him there. As a family the Sidneys were close and intensely collaborative, and together their writings provide a fascinating case study for inquiry into early modern court life and politics, family relations, education for both men and women, sex and marriage, and literary culture. In this course we’ll examine both the literature itself and the cultural beliefs, assumptions and practices in which it was embedded. Among the works we’ll read are Philip Sidney’s Defense of Poetry, his innovatory sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella, and his prose romance Arcadia (the most popular work of fiction in England for more than a century); Mary Sidney’s translation of the Psalms and of Seneca’s play Antonie; Robert Sidney’s lyric verse; and Mary Wroth’s prose romance Urania and her sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, both direct responses to the work of her uncle. We’ll also read poetry and drama by some of the members of the literary circle Mary Sidney hosted at her house, and to conclude we’ll consider a few of the post-Wroth continuations of Arcadia. Requirements will include several short papers as part of an electronic class conversation, one long essay, and a midterm and final.

Professor Al Rivero

1002 TTH 9:35-10:50

Jane Austen

We will read and discuss all of Jane Austen’s novels, from the epistolary Lady Susan to the unfinished Sanditon, in various historical and critical contexts. Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able, among other things, to assert with a certain degree of confidence that Pride and Prejudice is actually a book and not just the latest cinematic vehicle for Keira Knightley.

Requirements: One oral presentation; one or two essays (ca.10pp.); midterm examination; comprehensive final examination; class participation; and regular attendance.

Professor Sarah Wadsworth

1003 TTH 11:00-12:15

Mark Twain and Friends

Humorist and social critic, journalist and fiction writer, business man and artist, world traveler and American regionalist, literary and popular author, a writer who has been regarded as a caustic critic of racism as well as a perpetuator of racial stereotypes, Mark Twain is a writer whose life and work are characterized by seemingly endless contradictions, paradoxes, and controversies. This course offers an in-depth study of Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, one of the most highly praised yet intensely debated figures in our national literature. Focusing on his novels, stories, and sketches, we will investigate his career within the context of the literary circle in which his writing developed as well as the social history that informed his best work and recent criticism that offers new perspectives on canonical texts. Readings will range over the course of Mark Twain’s career, embracing a range of genres and modes, from travel sketches of Europe and the American West, to regional tales of the Old Southwest, and satirical novels and short stories. Texts to be assigned include the collaborative novel The Gilded Age (written with Charles Dudley Warner), along with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Pudd’nhead Wilson, and a generous sampling of Mark Twain’s travel writing, humorous sketches, and short stories. Course readings will also encompass works of fiction by several of his closest associates, including Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, and Charles Dudley Warner. The course will be conducted as a seminar, with a strong emphasis on class discussion. In addition to participating regularly in discussions, each student will complete several brief reflection papers and a research paper.

English 170: Studies in Language

Professor Steve Hartman Keiser

1001 MWF 11:00

Language and Social Identity

We will examine the relationships between language and social diversity in the general American speech community. Our aim will be to shed light on how individuals and social groups distinguish themselves on the basis of their choice of language, and the presence or absence of shared norms of social evaluation and interpretation. In particular, we will investigate the relationship between language and such social parameters as socioeconomic status, ethnicity, race, and gender. Finally, we will consider the role of language differences in the creation of social stereotypes, and their implications for social advantage or disadvantage.

Upon completion of this course you will be able to:

Explain why language changes and why dialects exist.
Analyze language variation in the subsystems of language: lexicon, phonology, morphology, syntax, and pragmatic
Describe the historical development and current status of rule-governed systems of Anglo-American regional dialects and African American English.
Critically analyze attitudes toward language varieties in the US and their speakers.

English 171: Studies in Literature and Culture

Professor Amy Blair

1001 TUTH 2:00-3:15

American Literary Realism

By reading works of American literary “realism” in their original contexts, and by reconsidering the boundaries between realism and romance, this course will allow us to come to a better understanding of the whole culture of the Gilded Age. The period between the end of the Civil War and the beginnings of World War I in Europe was one of profound social, economic, technological, and political changes in the United States. This course will look at a variety of ways American writers reflected and responded to the world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, addressing the waxing and waning popularity of sentimental literature, the elite enthusiasm for realist literature and the related growth of regional literature, the connection between fiction and the muckraking school of journalism, the explosion of literatures by and about immigrants, African American literary production in the eras of Reconstruction and Jim Crow, and the growth of popular periodicals. We will read works by Charles Chesnutt, Theodore Dreiser, William Dean Howells, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Henry James, James Weldon Johnson, Edith Wharton, and others.

English 173: Studies in Genre

Professor John Boly

1001 TUTH 9:35-10:50

Dystopian Fiction: Utopia/Dystopia/Heteroptopia

Is America run by a hidden and arrogant financial elite? Are politicians their sock-puppets? Could illegal and immoral petro-wars be started on false pretexts so a corrupt few can get rich and herd everyone else into a police state? Is corporate owned news a megaphone for CIA propaganda? Are vaccines and other pharmaceutical drugs delivery systems for diseases like cancer and AIDS? Are water supplies deliberately poisoned by eugenicists intent on reducing the population to morons? If questions like these interest you, then try this course. We will study the connections among three closely related genres: utopia (the desirable place), dystopia (the abject hellhole), and heterotopia (the denied or repressed place). The syllabus will include a broad range of works, from Frank Baum’s beloved children’s tale, The Wizard of Oz, to George Orwell’s vision of a global concentration camp, 1984; from Aldous Huxley’s eugenic paradise, Brave New World, to Margaret Atwood’s nightmare society dictated by women-hating fundamentalists, The Handmaid’s Tale; from Kurt Vonnegut’s slapstick black comedies to Kazuo Ishiguro’s elegant psychological thriller, Never Let Me Go. In addition to these fictional works, we will also look at some of the non-fictional narratives that inspired our novelists. These heterotopias, the repressed histories often dismissed as "conspiracy theories," will give us an opportunity to consider the writings of historians and investigative reporters such as Ida Tarbell, Anthony C. Sutton, Robert Stinnett, and Gary Allen. But the big surprise is that these heterotopians are joined by some unexpected conspiracy theorists: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, both Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Bill Clinton. If recent events leave you questioning the official picture of the world, then utopia, dystopia, and heterotopia are the genres for you.

Professor Angela Sorby

1002 TUTH 11:00-12:15

Children's Literature

Children’s literature is not just for children. In this rigorous class, we will read numerous children’s classics from 1780 to 2000; these are likely to include Newbery’s Mother Goose’s Melody, some Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie, Brown’s Goodnight, Moon, S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, and others, including a substantial amount of poetry. We will explore the evolving cultural contexts of these works while also tracing their manifestations in the commercial sphere, including spinoff books, toys, and films. Our aim is to understand how writers, past and present, have imagined childhood as an experience and children as a target audience. Requirements include two exams, a group presentation, some brief position papers, and a longer final paper.

English 177: Studies in Multicultural Literature

Professor Jodi Melamed

1001 TUTH 2:00

Race/Literature in Milwaukee after World War II

Senior Experience

How is it that Milwaukee, Wisconsin, today can be known as both “the All American City” and “The Most Segregated City in Milwaukee”? What makes Milwaukee both a paragon of multicultural America (“Festival City”) and a symbol of the entrenchment of racialized privilege and inequality? Focusing specifically on the post-World War II history and present of racial conflict and cooperation, the course seeks to make the study of race and ethnicity intellectually rigorous and immediately relevant for students at Marquette University. In particular, we will seek to understand racialization – a process that stigmatizes some forms of humanity and privileges others – as a complex factor that has deeply shaped the cultural, economic, political and social fabric of Milwaukee, as well as the experiences and consciousness of all its inhabitants. To do so, we will familiarize ourselves with the global and local histories of the city’s multiple social groups: white, African American, American Indian, Latino/a, Asian and Arab American, and LGBT. Rather than consider these groups as unified and static, we will consider how each undergoes constant change and is constantly hybridized by a multiplicity of other factors, including national origin, class, gender, religion, and sexuality. An equally important focus will be on the interaction between the literary text and the social text (the signs through which we “read” or make meaning of our social world) . In particular, we will examine how literary narrative can reinforce, oppose, or offer alternatives to dominant conceptions of race and racism. We will also put under pressure the conventional idea that “multicultural literature” facilitates transfers of knowledge and experience across cultural divisions, thereby contributing to anti-racist social transformation.

English 186: Studies in Women and Literature

Professor Aesha Adams-Roberts

1001 MWF 1:00

African American Women's Spirituality

In this class we will explore how spirituality functions in texts authored by African American women. Examining a broad range of literary works from authors such as Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as film and popular media, we will explore how writers resist the traditional dichotomy between spiritual and intellectual knowledge, folk and high culture, and spirituality and institutionalized religion. In particular we will examine how spirituality has aided or hindered African American women in their quest for identity, community, and equality. Requirements include a journal, a group presentation, a Wikipedia article on an author or work of your choice and a final project (non-traditional projects are encouraged!).

English 191: Creative Writing

Professor Larry Watson

1001 MW 2:25-3:40
1002 MW 3:50-5:05

Fiction

A course in writing fiction, organized as a lecture/workshop. In addition to writing exercises covering the basics of the craft, students will produce 30-40 pages of fiction by the end of the semester. They will also discuss each other’s works and write critical responses to a number of short stories.

Text: Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway

Professor Ed Block

1003 TTH 2:00-3:15

Poetry

After some initial readings, to get our bearings, this course will be a “workshop” in the writing of various poetic genres. Besides some exercises in perception and description, weekly assignments, to be read aloud and commented upon “in workshop,” will yield a portfolio of work by the end of the semester. The course will involve a good deal of reading aloud, and (perhaps) some memorization.

English 196: Undergraduate Seminar

Professor CJ Hribal

• 1001 MW 2:25-3:40

Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction

Senior Experience

“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” So says that great theorist of narrative craft, the filmmaker Mel Brooks. Of course, most of life (and most of the fiction that tries to reflect the complexity of life) falls all along the spectrum between (and including) those two poles. Life is both tragic and comic. Or as the Yiddish proverb has it, “Man plans. God laughs.” This workshop will give students an opportunity to develop narratives that reflect that complexity. Milan Kundera defined the novel as "the great prose form in which an author thoroughly explores, by means of experimental selves [characters], some great themes of existence." Tweak that definition a little to include short fiction as well, and that’s what most fiction writing is about. In this workshop students will develop proficiency with those techniques (many of which they first encountered in ENGL 191) that will help them do that. They’ll also add additional techniques to their repertoire, examine narratives from technical (as well as critical) viewpoints, develop fluency in discussing fiction writing from the practitioner’s viewpoint, and, in general, write better prose and better narratives. In addition to a few writing exercises, students will produce 30 pages of prose fiction by semester’s end (revising a lot of it) and will write a number of short critical annotations concerning assigned readings.
TEXTS: The Story Behind The Story, Barrett and Turchi, eds. + student work

English 198: Special Topics in Literature and Writing

Professor Tim Machan

1001 MWF 10:00

The Vikings

(Cross listed with History- Register 198/1001)

This course will be devoted to the history, culture and literature of Scandinavia during the age of the Vikings. Our concerns will be both with the social and political events of the period and with the ways in which medieval Scandinavians used fiction, history, and mythology in order to present and interpret the world in which they lived. The issues that we will consider include Viking religion and mythology, the unification of the individual Scandinavian kingdoms, the Christianization of a heroic warrior culture, the Vikings’ own concerns with history and self-representation, and the raids and colonizing missions that they effected in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the North Atlantic. This course qualifies as a pre-1800 course in English and a category II class in History.

Graduate Courses
English 205: Seminar in English Literature Beginning 1500s Professor M.C. Bodden 1701 MW 5:45-7:00 Gender and Crime What sort of behavior was considered “criminal” behavior that so large a proportion of people in medieval and early modern England were at some stage in their lives accused of misdemeanours and felonies? How does literature (including court cases and letters) represent modes of thought, the vocabularies, and the actions that people took to deal with the inequities of class structure, of the economy, the bias of the law, and domestic violence? How, in particular, did women devise forms of talk/conversation so as to insist on a different knowledge of their economic and sexual position, to openly negotiate the terms of their subordination (while often being complicit with those terms)? Topics examined in this course will include taverns and brawling, religion and ‘crime,’ rape, marital discord and crime, treason by imagination, subversive women, cross-dressing, and the “female crime wave” of the late 1600's. Texts include: Canterbury Tales’ General Prologue, Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale, The Reeve’s Tale, The Miller’s Tale, The Merchant’s Tale, Lancelot and Guenevere, Morte Darthur, Tristan and Iseult, Book of Margery Kempe, The Roaring Girl, and primary texts of court cases 1580- 1630.
English 217: Seminar in Shakespeare Professor John Curran 1001 MW 2:25-3:40 Shakespeare: His Contemporaries and Greatness In this seminar we investigate the issue of greatness as it seems to be reflected in Shakespeare’s drama. The idea of individual human greatness has accounted for much of the attention Shakespeare’s characters have enjoyed, but more recently they have been deemed interesting to the extent he undermines or interrogates this concept. Does Shakespeare cast his characters as “great”? What is greatness? What theoretical, political, or theological implications does it carry? In considering these questions with regard to Shakespeare’s characters, we also consider his own greatness. What makes him stand apart in our minds from his fellow Renaissance dramatists? Does he capture greatness better than they? Or does he rise above them for complicating the idea in ways they cannot? We will concentrate on Shakespeare’s histories and tragedies, examining each play in tandem with an analogous selection from another dramatist. Selections will include plays by Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton, Chapman, Massinger, and Webster.
English 230: Studies in 19th Century British Literature Professor Ed Block 1001 TUTH 9:35-10:50 Victorian Literature In the Victorian era, though the novel was gaining ascendancy, poetry remained a genre that “provided them [the Victorians] with narratives that entertained and inspired. It gave them words to attach to their feelings” (Jay Parini, “Why Poetry Matters”). Using, among other sources, George Steiner’s Real Presences and Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self, we shall examine both canonical and other Victorian poetic – and related – texts for how they respond to such key issues of their age (and ours) as faith, skepticism, utilitarianism, and science. Besides daily participation in discussion, required work will include an oral presentation, a short paper, a book review, and a seminar-style paper (the length and focus of the sort found in scholarly journals. There will also be a fair amount of reading aloud.
English 245: Seminar in 20th Century British Literature Professor John Boly 1001 TUTH 12:35-1:50 The Public vs. the late W.B. Yeats Sometimes too much of a good thing can be a bad thing, and this may be the case with W. B. Yeats. His poems are so accomplished, and in so many different ways, that as with any immense burst of energy, they leave a stunned vacuum behind. While this situation is convenient for the anthologist, it is hell for subsequent writers, those souls fated to exist in the unwelcome and gratuitous oblivion of Yeats’ behind. Thus the Irish poets of the last seventy years have sought to lovingly, thoroughly, and deeply bury their magisterial ancestor. This course will offer a survey of Irish verse after Yeats. It will focus on the many ways in which these talented and diverse imaginations have resisted Yeats’ influence in their themes, perspectives, images, metaphors, and myths. The poets studied will include the major figures Heaney, Boland, Mahon, Longley, Muldoon, and McGuckian, as well as gifted but lesser known contributors such as Durcan, Clarke, O Riordáin, and Ní Dhomhnaill (in translation). Three essays and occasional seminar presentations.
English 255: Seminar in American Literature from the Beginning 1900s Professor Angela Sorby 1001 TUTH 3:35-4:50 Rearding Popular Culture In this course, we will read some canonical nineteenth-century American texts together with examples of (then-) contemporary mass culture. Thus, for example, Peck’s Bad Boy and His Pa will be paired with Twain’s Huckleberry Finn Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha with Whitman’s Song of Myself; and Lippard’s Quaker City, or The Monks of Monk Hall with Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher.” We will also draw on secondary sources, including Reynolds’s Beneath the American Renaissance, Levine’s Highbrow/Lowbrow, and Lott’s Love and Theft. Our goal is to define and to practice a “cultural studies” approach to nineteenth-century literary texts, as we explore what was popular, what was not popular, and why. Students will be required to lead one 75-minute class discussion and to produce a seminar paper.
English 265: Seminar in 20th Century American Literature Professor Jodi Melamed 1001 TUTH 11:00-12:15 The Imagination as a Social Practice Arjun Appaduria argues that with globalization “the imagination has become an organized field of social practices … and a form of negotiation between sites of agency (“individuals”) and globally defined fields of possibility.” In fact, the question of the resituating and transformative effects of the literary imagination (an ideological concept in need of historical situating) on culture, law, society, identity, politics and the material everyday preoccupies 20th century American literature. In this course, we investigate 20th century U.S. literature and influential criticism through the rubric of “the imagination as social practice.” Our examination will move across three inter-related domains: 1) Flashpoint texts that blur the boundaries between literary, theoretical, and political work including W.E.B. Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk, Richard Wright’s Native Son, Theresa Cha’s Dictee, and Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera; 2) The study of social movements that fuse cultural production and political activism to a strong degree including the Harlem Renaissance, the Popular Front, the Black Arts/Black Power movement, women of color feminism, and LGBT movements; and 3) theory that starts from ‘the literary’ to intervene in philosophy, history and politics, including work by Herbert Marcuse, Raymond Williams, Jacques Derrida, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Gerald Vizenor, and Lisa Lowe. Throughout, we will focus on ‘English’ in the academy as a key place where ‘the imagination as social practice” is determined and exercised. We will also consider the stakes of our own practices of literary criticism and how we approach literary texts. Requirements include one oral presentation, book review, an autocritique, and a journal-length seminar paper.
English 281: Modern Critical Theory and Practice Professor Steve Karian 1001 TUTH 2:00-3:15 This course is an introduction to literary research methods, bibliography and textual studies, the principles and practices of literary criticism, and literary theory. We will use and compare the important electronic and print tools that are available. The primary emphasis will be on acquiring portable research skills for literary study in graduate school and beyond. Course readings will include: James L. Harner, Literary Research Guide; William Proctor Williams and Craig S. Abbott, An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies; and many readings on reserve. Course requirements will include a variety of brief written exercises, oral presentations, and a seminar-length essay.

Graduate Courses

English 205: Seminar in English Literature Beginning 1500s

Professor M.C. Bodden

1701 MW 5:45-7:00

Gender and Crime

What sort of behavior was considered “criminal” behavior that so large a proportion of people in medieval and early modern England were at some stage in their lives accused of misdemeanours and felonies? How does literature (including court cases and letters) represent modes of thought, the vocabularies, and the actions that people took to deal with the inequities of class structure, of the economy, the bias of the law, and domestic violence? How, in particular, did women devise forms of talk/conversation so as to insist on a different knowledge of their economic and sexual position, to openly negotiate the terms of their subordination (while often being complicit with those terms)? Topics examined in this course will include taverns and brawling, religion and ‘crime,’ rape, marital discord and crime, treason by imagination, subversive women, cross-dressing, and the “female crime wave” of the late 1600's. Texts include: Canterbury Tales’ General Prologue, Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale, The Reeve’s Tale, The Miller’s Tale, The Merchant’s Tale, Lancelot and Guenevere, Morte Darthur, Tristan and Iseult, Book of Margery Kempe, The Roaring Girl, and primary texts of court cases 1580- 1630.

English 217: Seminar in Shakespeare

Professor John Curran

1001 MW 2:25-3:40

Shakespeare: His Contemporaries and Greatness

In this seminar we investigate the issue of greatness as it seems to be reflected in Shakespeare’s drama. The idea of individual human greatness has accounted for much of the attention Shakespeare’s characters have enjoyed, but more recently they have been deemed interesting to the extent he undermines or interrogates this concept. Does Shakespeare cast his characters as “great”? What is greatness? What theoretical, political, or theological implications does it carry? In considering these questions with regard to Shakespeare’s characters, we also consider his own greatness. What makes him stand apart in our minds from his fellow Renaissance dramatists? Does he capture greatness better than they? Or does he rise above them for complicating the idea in ways they cannot? We will concentrate on Shakespeare’s histories and tragedies, examining each play in tandem with an analogous selection from another dramatist. Selections will include plays by Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton, Chapman, Massinger, and Webster.

English 230: Studies in 19th Century British Literature

Professor Ed Block

1001 TUTH 9:35-10:50

Victorian Literature

In the Victorian era, though the novel was gaining ascendancy, poetry remained a genre that “provided them [the Victorians] with narratives that entertained and inspired. It gave them words to attach to their feelings” (Jay Parini, “Why Poetry Matters”). Using, among other sources, George Steiner’s Real Presences and Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self, we shall examine both canonical and other Victorian poetic – and related – texts for how they respond to such key issues of their age (and ours) as faith, skepticism, utilitarianism, and science.

Besides daily participation in discussion, required work will include an oral presentation, a short paper, a book review, and a seminar-style paper (the length and focus of the sort found in scholarly journals. There will also be a fair amount of reading aloud.

English 245: Seminar in 20th Century British Literature

Professor John Boly

1001 TUTH 12:35-1:50

The Public vs. the late W.B. Yeats

Sometimes too much of a good thing can be a bad thing, and this may be the case with W. B. Yeats. His poems are so accomplished, and in so many different ways, that as with any immense burst of energy, they leave a stunned vacuum behind. While this situation is convenient for the anthologist, it is hell for subsequent writers, those souls fated to exist in the unwelcome and gratuitous oblivion of Yeats’ behind. Thus the Irish poets of the last seventy years have sought to lovingly, thoroughly, and deeply bury their magisterial ancestor. This course will offer a survey of Irish verse after Yeats. It will focus on the many ways in which these talented and diverse imaginations have resisted Yeats’ influence in their themes, perspectives, images, metaphors, and myths. The poets studied will include the major figures Heaney, Boland, Mahon, Longley, Muldoon, and McGuckian, as well as gifted but lesser known contributors such as Durcan, Clarke, O Riordáin, and Ní Dhomhnaill (in translation). Three essays and occasional seminar presentations.

English 255: Seminar in American Literature from the Beginning 1900s

Professor Angela Sorby

1001 TUTH 3:35-4:50

Rearding Popular Culture

In this course, we will read some canonical nineteenth-century American texts together with examples of (then-) contemporary mass culture. Thus, for example, Peck’s Bad Boy and His Pa will be paired with Twain’s Huckleberry Finn Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha with Whitman’s Song of Myself; and Lippard’s Quaker City, or The Monks of Monk Hall with Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher.” We will also draw on secondary sources, including Reynolds’s Beneath the American Renaissance, Levine’s Highbrow/Lowbrow, and Lott’s Love and Theft. Our goal is to define and to practice a “cultural studies” approach to nineteenth-century literary texts, as we explore what was popular, what was not popular, and why. Students will be required to lead one 75-minute class discussion and to produce a seminar paper.

English 265: Seminar in 20th Century American Literature

Professor Jodi Melamed

1001 TUTH 11:00-12:15

The Imagination as a Social Practice

Arjun Appaduria argues that with globalization “the imagination has become an organized field of social practices … and a form of negotiation between sites of agency (“individuals”) and globally defined fields of possibility.” In fact, the question of the resituating and transformative effects of the literary imagination (an ideological concept in need of historical situating) on culture, law, society, identity, politics and the material everyday preoccupies 20th century American literature. In this course, we investigate 20th century U.S. literature and influential criticism through the rubric of “the imagination as social practice.” Our examination will move across three inter-related domains: 1) Flashpoint texts that blur the boundaries between literary, theoretical, and political work including W.E.B. Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk, Richard Wright’s Native Son, Theresa Cha’s Dictee, and Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera; 2) The study of social movements that fuse cultural production and political activism to a strong degree including the Harlem Renaissance, the Popular Front, the Black Arts/Black Power movement, women of color feminism, and LGBT movements; and 3) theory that starts from ‘the literary’ to intervene in philosophy, history and politics, including work by Herbert Marcuse, Raymond Williams, Jacques Derrida, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Gerald Vizenor, and Lisa Lowe. Throughout, we will focus on ‘English’ in the academy as a key place where ‘the imagination as social practice” is determined and exercised. We will also consider the stakes of our own practices of literary criticism and how we approach literary texts. Requirements include one oral presentation, book review, an autocritique, and a journal-length seminar paper.

English 281: Modern Critical Theory and Practice

Professor Steve Karian

1001 TUTH 2:00-3:15

This course is an introduction to literary research methods, bibliography and textual studies, the principles and practices of literary criticism, and literary theory. We will use and compare the important electronic and print tools that are available. The primary emphasis will be on acquiring portable research skills for literary study in graduate school and beyond. Course readings will include:

James L. Harner, Literary Research Guide; William Proctor Williams and Craig S. Abbott, An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies; and many readings on reserve. Course requirements will include a variety of brief written exercises, oral presentations, and a seminar-length essay.

COURSES OFFERED SPRING 2009

UPCOMING COURSES

ARCHIVE OF COURSES

ENGL 23—Introduction to American Literature 2

ENGL 033—Introduction to American Literature 2

English 042: Introduction to Loterature; Fiction

English 043: Introduction to Literature; Drama

English 044: Introduction to Literature; Poetry

English 101: History of the English Language

English 104: Advanced Composition

English 105: Writing for the Professions

English 106: The Art of Rhetoric: Theory and Application

English Literature to 1500

English 121: The Age of Johnson

English 130: The Romantic Period

English 147: Post Colonial Literature

English 152: American Literature from 1865-1914

English 158: American Drama

English 160: Shakespeares Major Plays

English 165: Individual Author

English 170: Studies in Language

English 171: Studies in Literature and Culture

English 173: Studies in Genre

English 177: Studies in Multicultural Literature

English 186: Studies in Women and Literature

English 191: Creative Writing

English 196: Undergraduate Seminar

English 198: Special Topics in Literature and Writing

English 205: Seminar in English Literature Beginning 1500s

English 217: Seminar in Shakespeare

English 230: Studies in 19th Century British Literature

English 245: Seminar in 20th Century British Literature

English 255: Seminar in American Literature from the Beginning 1900s

English 265: Seminar in 20th Century American Literature

English 281: Modern Critical Theory and Practice

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