English 217: British
Literature
Dr. Hilary Donatini
MWF 10:00-10:50
Humanities Core
This is a twelve-week, three-credit hybrid course.
Contact Professor Donatini for details.
Have you ever wondered
about the origins of the famous British sense of humor? Get ready to laugh and
raise the occasional eyebrow over some silly, sophisticated, and satirical
texts. This section of English 217 will explore humor and wit in British
literature in a range of works from Shakespeare to the present day. Texts will
include the following: William
Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I; W.S.
Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, The Pirates
of Penzance; and Zadie Smith, White
Teeth, in addition to selected comical poems and short stories.
Assignments: Two essays,
two exams, quizzes, a presentation, class participation, as well as online discussion
posts and participation.
English 303: Writer’s
Workshop Screenwriting
Dr. Maura Grady
TTh 3:05-4:20 PM
Elective for the Creative
Writing major and minor
This course familiarizes
students with various approaches and techniques for writing feature film
screenplays. Focus will be on dramatic structure, character, and dialogue, with
the goal of producing a screenplay sample, a presentation treatment of the
film, and shorter analytical assignments.
May be repeated once for credit.
Required text: Duncan, Genre Screenwriting: How to Write Popular
Screenplays that Sell
English
304: The Short Story
Dr. David FitzSimmons
Humanities Core; Creative Writing elective
An intensive study of the short story, with particular attention paid to
the narrative construction of representative short stories. Text(s) will draw
from a variety of Anglophone authors. Although the course is primarily a study
of the writings of others, students may have some opportunity to compose their
own short fiction as part of the examination and interrogation of the short
story genre. Course texts will include one or more short story anthologies.
Written papers will be requisite in this 300-level course.
Probable Text: The Longman
Anthology of Short Fiction: Stories and Authors in Context. Ed. Dana Gioia
and R. S. Gwynn.
On Reserve: The Captive
Imagination : A Casebook on The Yellow Wallpaper. Ed. Catherine Golden. New
York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1992.
English 308: The Poem
Dr. Deborah Fleming
TTh 9:25-10:40
Humanities Core; English Major and Minor elective; Creative Writing
Major and Minor elective
Required Text: Ferguson, The Norton Anthology of
Poetry, shorter fifth edition
Catalogue
Description: An extensive analysis of poetic form on the basis of metrical,
structural, and thematic elements. Discussion of representative poems from
various literary periods. Analysis
of both open and closed poetic forms.
Course
Objectives: The course objectives are to enable students to learn how to read and
to write about poetry, to enhance their critical thinking ability by discussing
the meaning of poetry, and to refine their analytical writing ability by
writing about poetry. We will discuss poetry from throughout the periods of
literature in English.
Instructional
Approach: The regular class format will be lecture and discussion.
Assignments: Two
Midterm Exams, 15% each (30%); Paper One, 5-6 pages, 15%, an explication of the
meaning of a poem, its imagery, and its figurative language ; Paper Two, 4-6
pages, 20%, an in-depth discussion of a poem, its imagery, its figurative
language, and its metrical structure; Comprehensive Final Exam, 20%; Class
Participation, 15%
English 309: African American Literature
Mr. Jay Robinson
MWF 12:00-12:50
Humanities Core and elective in Integrated Language Arts and the English
and Creative Writing minors
We will
read texts from a variety of genres. These texts focus on the experiences of
African Americans in the contemporary urban environment of the middle to late
20th and early 21st centuries. Our critical analysis
in a discussion/seminar format will examine how these works portray the lives
and cultural practices of African Americans in such a context and how these
texts comment on significant issues such as racial identity and race relations.
English
310: Literature for Adolescents
Dr. David FitzSimmons
Spring 2014
Integrated Language Arts requirement
Beginning with Jay Hosler’s
highly publicized graphic novel Clan Apis
(New York Times, NPR, Discover Magazine), we will examine a
variety of young adult texts, always asking how
they work (or, of course, how they don’t
work!). Such rhetorical analyses will cover the genres of graphic novels,
traditional novels, short stories, and poetry. We will underpin all our
literary endeavors with Peter Rabinowitz’s theoretical text Before Reading. Individual papers will
accompany in-class studies.
Course Texts: cummings, e. e.
Selected Poems; Faulkner, William. Collected
Stories; Hosler, Jay. Clan Apis; Johnson,
Angela. A Cool Moonlight; Rabinowitz,
Peter J. Before Reading; Silverstein,
Shel. A Light in the Attic.
English 314: Gender Across Borders
Dr. Sharleen Mondal
MWF 11:00-11:50
Humanities Core; elective in Integrated Language Arts and
the English and Creative Writing minors
In this section of ENG 314, we will explore the theme of
crossing the borders which divide people by class, race, gender, sexuality, and
religion. Through exploring writing from the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries by authors from England, the U.S., and India, we will expand our
understanding of how diverse writers tried to understand the norms which
governed their societies and alternatives to those norms. Assigned texts
will likely include Sarah Grand's The Tenor and the Boy, Rokeya Sakhawat
Hossein's "Sultana's Dream," E. M. Forster's A Passage to India,
and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.
Assignments: Regular classroom participation in class
discussion, short in-class presentations, regular reading quizzes, short
literary analysis papers, and two longer literary arguments incorporating
multiple sources.
English
315: German Literature in Translation
Dr.
Maura Grady
Humanities
Core and Border Crossings (GPS)
Through the reading of
literary texts in English translation this course provides an overview of the
literature and culture of the German-speaking countries during the period of
what we usually call “modernism” and a little bit beyond.
Texts will be selected from
the following: T. Fontane, Effi Briest; A. Schnitzler, Fräulein Else;
T. Mann, Death in Venice (& possibly Tonio Kröger); F. Kafka,
The Trial; G. Grass, The Tin Drum;
H. Hesse, Steppenwolf; M. Frisch, Homo Faber; and H. Böll, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum
English 324: The Modern
Novel
Dr. Linda Joyce Brown
MWF 12:00-12:50
Humanities Core; elective
for English major and minor and the Creative Writing major and minor.
This section of English 324
focuses on novels of modern multicultural America. We will read four or five
novels that all engage (in different ways) with the question of what it means
to “belong”—to a nation, to a culture, to a place.
Texts are likely to include some
of the following: Anzia Yezierska, Bread
Givers (1925); Ralph Ellison, Invisible
Man (1952); John Okada, No-No Boy
(1956); Chang-Rae Lee, Native Speaker
(1995); Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
(2002); and Diana Abu-Jaber, Crescent
(2003).
English 325 N: Major Writers
Seminar: Jane Austen
Dr. Russell Weaver
MWF 1:00-1:50
Meets Requirement for the
English Major
This course will cover
Austen’s five greatest novels: Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Sense and Sensibility,
and Persuasion.
Assignments: Take-home exams
on Pride and Prejudice and Emma; presentations on Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility/Persuasion.
English
370: Russian Novel
Dr. Russell Weaver
MWF
2:00-2:50
Humanities
Core and English Elective
In
this course, we will be studying arguably the two greatest novels of all time,
Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Dostoevsky’s
The Brothers Karamazov. I certainly
know of no novels, apart from Moby-Dick,
perhaps, that can stand with them. I will ask you to read 300 pages of War and Peace over Christmas break so
that you will not have so many pages during the semester.
Texts:
Tolstoy, War and Peace (Norton
Critical Edition); Dostoevsky, The
Brothers Karamazov (Norton Critical Edition)
Assignments:
Two take-home exams and two presentations.
English 371:
Literature and
Film
Dr. Gary Levine
MWF
11-11:50
Aesthetics
Core (Note this is NOT Humanities Core).
An
intensive examination of film with particular stress on visual narrative as it
compares and contrasts to written literary narrative. The course focuses
on a close reading of both classic and contemporary motion pictures, with
particular attention paid to shot composition, editing techniques, lighting,
sound, and other technical elements of film, including casting and art
direction. Students will consider how these elements create a visual
narrative that can be studied as an artistic and cultural expression. Each
student will complete two extended essays (8-10 pages) due at the midterm and
final examination periods of the course. Students also will be required
to complete 1-2 page response papers on the assigned date for each film/book
combination. We will study 4-5 novels and their adaptations. I’m a big
fan of Alexander Payne and the Coen Brothers; I also like to include some of
the up and coming women directors such as Lone Sherfig (An Education) or Deborah Granik (Winter’s Bone). Note
that while this is a core course open to all AU students, it will be taught at
a fairly rigorous level to accommodate those students seriously interested in
film; those looking just to satisfy a core requirement, while welcome, are
strongly encouraged to use the S/U option.
English 411: Victorian Secrets
Dr. Sharleen Mondal
MWF 1:00-1:50
Meets upper-level requirements for English majors and
minors, Creative Writing, and Integrated Language Arts
In this section of ENG 411, we will examine Victorian
novels which have in common a narrative built around a provocative
secret. From detective fiction to imperial adventure to tales of wives
with more than just one husband, the notion of the well-kept secret was central
to some of the most popular novels of the nineteenth century. We will
investigate how these secrets--and the tales woven around them--enabled
Victorian writers to work through some of the most pressing social issues of
the period, including gender and marriage law, racial and class hierarchies,
and British imperial power. In addition to several shorter pieces,
assigned texts will likely include some of the following texts: Wilkie Collins'
The Moonstone, Rudyard Kipling's Kim, Arthur Conan Doyle's The
Sign of Four, Sarah Grand's The Tenor and the Boy, and Mary
Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret.
Assignments: Short literary analysis papers, regular
classroom participation in class discussion and occasionally leading
discussion, regular reading quizzes, and two longer literary arguments
incorporating multiple sources.
English
417: English Grammar and Usage
Dr. Deborah
Fleming
TTH 12:15-1:30
ILA requirement; English major
elective; Middle Childhood Generalist Endorsement requirement; English Language
Arts Concentration major elective; English Minor elective
Required
Text: Koln,
Understanding English Grammar sixth or current ed.
Instructional
Format: Regular class format will be lecture, workshop, discussion.
Course
Objectives: This course provides students with knowledge of grammar, syntax,
and mechanics and fulfills NCATE requirements for teachers of English and
Language Arts. We will also study
ways to use the vocabulary of grammar in the teaching of writing.
Assignments
and Grades: Two midterm exams; final examination given at our scheduled final
exam time; homework, quizzes, class participation; paper, five to seven pages
English 428: American Literature IV
Dr. Dan Lehman
Monday nights: 6:30-9:10
Meets upper-level requirements for English majors and
minors, Creative Writing, Integrated Language Arts
English 428 aims to provide students with an in-depth
understanding of major themes of American literature since the end of World War
II. Against the backdrop of contemporary literary theory, the course offers an
in-depth look at a rich variety of recent American
literature: experimental novels, neo-realism, literary journalism/creative
nonfiction, and contemporary American poetry. A recent offering of the
course featured writing by Joan Didion, John Hersey, Paul Auster, Tim O'Brien,
Toni Morrison, John Berryman, Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore, Kate Braverman, and
others. Texts for Spring 2014 are likely to change substantially, but will
feature a similarly savory potpourri. The course is a seminar and features
in-depth reading, spirited conversation, and deeply analytical writing.
