English 201 A&B Introduction to Creative Writing--Poetry Section
Dr. Deborah Fleming
MWF 10:00-10:50
Requirement for Creative Writing Major & Minor, Elective in the Integrated Language Arts Major
In this seminar class we will discuss students' own poems as well as learn about poetic forms.
Requirements: During each week devoted to poetry, students will write one or several poems to be discussed in class; portfolio submitted at the end of the semester.
Text: Mark Strand and Eavan Boland, The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms
English 301 Writers' Workshop: Poetry
Dr. Deborah Fleming
MWF 1:00-1:50
Requirement for Creative Writing Major & Minor, Elective in the Integrated Language Arts Major
In this seminar class we will discuss students' own poems as well as review poetic forms, technique, and style.
Requirements: One poem per week, reaction papers most weeks on assigned poems, one paper on an Ashland Poetry Press book; portfolio submitted at the end of the semester.
Text: Ferguson, et. al., Norton Anthology of Poetry, Shorter Fifth Edition or similar Norton Anthology of Poetry; one Ashland Poetry Press book.
ENG 314OL8A: Literature and Gender
Dr. Sharleen Mondal
Online Course (Mostly asynchronous; group meetings via Blackboard Collaborate TBD)
Core Humanities, Elective for English and Integrated Language Arts majors
This is an eight-week online course with seven weeks of instruction (the eighth is designated for final grading by the University). The course offers the equivalent course work and student learning outcomes as the regular sixteen-week version of the course. Students are strongly encouraged to read the novels and/or watch the films ahead of time. This course will focus on the theme of Intersectional Worlds--that is, how experiences of gender intersect with and are shaped by factors such as race, class, sexuality, nationality, language, and religion. We will begin our inquiry with a short research assignment in which each student will investigate the role of gender in their respective career field. Thus oriented to each of our individual and professional stakes in the study of gender, we will proceed to a series of essays, films, and novels spanning then nineteenth century to the present day.
Likely texts include the following:
"I Want A Wife" by Judy Brady (essay)
"Yes, Ma'am" by Deirdre McCloskey (essay)
"Just Walk On By" by Brent Staples (essay)
The Brandon Teena Story (documentary, 1998; directed by Susan Muska and Gréta Olafsdóttir)
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (short story)
Excerpt from Of Queens' Gardens by John Ruskin (essay)
"Statement Repudiating the Rights of Husbands" by John Stuart Mill (paragraph)
"Professions for Women" by Virginia Woolf (essay--originally a speech)
Passing by Nella Larsen (novel)
Sand Queen by Helen Benedict (novel)
Edward Said, On Orientalism (interview, 1998 with Sut Jhally)
The Invisible War (documentary, 2012; directed by Kirby Dick)
Literary criticism and historical documents as relevant
The course will require a short research assignment, short close reading papers, two longer papers, two presentations, and regular discussion board and journal assignments.
ENG 316REHON: Postcolonial Literature
Dr. Sharleen Mondal
MWF, 11:00-11:50 AM
Core Humanities, Elective for English and Integrated Language Arts majors
This Honors course will focus on postcolonial literature and film from South Asia, specifically India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. We will begin with the late colonial period, examining the end of British rule and struggle for independence, decolonization, modernity, and postcolonial nationhood through the perspective of poetry, short stories, essays, novels, and film. We will consider the nuances of everyday life under British rule, what it meant for colonized Indians to seek independence (inspired the Irish "Home Rule" movement), and the religious and linguistic tensions that led to the formation of Bangladesh.
Likely texts include:
Timothy Corrigan's A Short Guide to Writing about Film
Rudyard Kipling's "The White Man's Burden" (poem)
Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's "Sultana's Dream" (short story) and Padmarag (novella)
Tahmima Anam's A Golden Age (novel)
Selected short stories by Rabindranath Tagore
Selections from letters and speeches by Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru
Selections from Malala Yousafzai's I Am Malala (autobiography)
Gandhi (film, 1982, directed by Richard Attenborough)
Rang De Basanti (film, 2006, directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra)
My Name is Khan (film, 2010, directed by Karan Johar)
Literary criticism and historical materials as relevant
Class activities include regular discussion, reading quizzes, two exams, short close reading papers, two longer literary argument papers, and two presentations.
English 319: Modern Drama
Dr. Jayne E. Waterman
T Th 1:40-2:55 p.m. (Hybrid)
Core Humanities, elective in the the English and Creative Writing majors and minors
This course will begin with the close reading analysis of some powerful one-act plays from the late nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. We will also consider a range of full plays from, for example, Chekhov’s trivialities, Beckett’s absurdism, and Pinter’s pauses to Churchill’s body politics, Mamet’s language uncorrected, and Nottage’s triumph in trauma. All of these texts will help the class explore key issues, ideas, texts, and contexts of European and American modern drama. The main focus of the course will be to examine plays from different periods and styles. Attention will also be paid to the cultural, historical, political, sociological, and dramaturgical aspects that surround and inform the works. Themes of gender and race, the tension of illusion and reality, and the crisis of the individual and the family will also be of significance as we explore modern dramatic sensibilities and discourse. In addition to the texts, the course will, where relevant, consider the adaptations and interpretations of the plays in performance and film.
Assignments: Two essays, a presentation, in class and online projects and participation.
English 325: Major Writers Seminar: Paul Laurence Dunbar
Dr. Jayne E. Waterman
TTh 12:15-1:30 p.m. (Hybrid)
Required for English majors, elective in the Creative and Integrated Language Arts majors
This course provides a comprehensive understanding of one major writer: Paul Laurence Dunbar. During his lifetime, this young author from Dayton, Ohio was both critically acclaimed and commercially popular. Indeed, at the time of his death, he was the most famous poet in America. Classes will include extensive reading of selected Dunbar works – in his short but productive life he produced twelve collections of poetry, four novels, four collections of short stories, and numerous lyrics, plays, and essays, which were all published in leading magazines and journals. This reading will be supplemented with critical, biographical, and historical/archival materials. In addition to an examination of Dunbar’s literary career, the course will consider his work in relation to his contemporaries, focus on his role in American literary history, and assess his literary legacy. Underpinning this exploration of Dunbar’s work will be an engagement with the idea of identity, the trope of the mask, the historical complexity of race, and the tensions of his critical reception and literary production.
Assignments: Two essays, a presentation, in class and online projects and
participation.
Dr. Linda Joyce Brown
MWF 1:00-1:50
Requirement in the English and ILA majors
This advanced course is designed to give you extensive practice writing, revising, and editing nonfiction prose, with an emphasis on revising for rhetorical and stylistic effectiveness. Our goal will be to write prose that is not only clear and efficient but stylish enough that a reader will want to read it. The skills you develop in this course should help you beyond college, no matter your career path.
English 365 Greek Literature
Dr. Russell Weaver
MWF 9:00-9:50
Core Humanities, elective in the the English and Creative Writing majors and minors
In this course we will read some of the great masterpieces of Greek Literature. This particular semester we will be reading Homer’s Odyssey along with ten plays by Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus. Sophocles: Antigone, Oedipus the King, The Women of Trachis, Ajax and Philoctetes
Euripides: Medea, Hippolytus, Iphigenia at Aulis, Electra.Aeschylus: Agamemnon.There will be two take-homes, one on either Antigone or Medea and one on The Odyssey and one presentation on two of the other plays.
English 372: Nietzsche and the Problem of Values
Dr. Russell Weaver
T Th 9:25-10:40
Core Humanities, elective in the the English and Creative Writing majors and minors
We will be reading Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Conrad’s Lord Jim, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Dostoevksy’s Crime and Punishment, and Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. Two papers and two presentations. No philosophy background necessary.
English 408: Eighteenth-Century English Literature
Dr. Hilary Donatini
T Th 12:15-1:30
Elective in the English, Creative Writing, and ILA majors, Elective in the English and Creative Writing minors
The eighteenth century is often referred to as the “Age of Reason” or “Age of Enlightenment”—a time when philosophical inquiry and scientific discovery blossomed. English 408 will examine poems, novels, and plays that both reflect and resist the rational and empirical—often in the same work. The great eighteenth-century works are endowed with intellectual seriousness yet bursting with vitality and joie de vivre. Our attention will be constantly trained on literary form, as we explore poetic, novelistic, and dramatic form. Throughout the semester we will appreciate what is often called the golden age of satire, a mode that cuts across all genres, skewering its targets and setting forth a moral vision. Because the literature of the period was so grounded in its world, we will pay attention to relevant historical contexts as well.
Selected Texts:
Frances Burney, Evelina
John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel
Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer
Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock, Essay on Man
Samuel Johnson, Rasselas
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
English 417 Grammar and Usage
Dr. Deborah Fleming
MWF 11:00-11:50
Requirement for Integrated Language Arts, Major Elective for Middle Grades Language Concentration, Major Elective for English
The course format will consist of lecture, discussion, and workshop as we learn the entire grammar of the English language as well as discuss ways of using grammar in the teaching of writing and teaching grammar and usage to secondary and middle grades students.
Requirements: Three midterms and final; homework, quizzes, practice; one paper.
Text: Kolln, Martha, et. al., Understanding English Grammar, Tenth Edition, Pearson
ENG 425 A: American Literature I: Colonial to Federalist
Dr. Linda Joyce Brown
MWF 12:00-12:50
Elective in the English, Creative Writing, and ILA majors, Elective in the English and Creative Writing minors
Our course will begin with precolonial oral narrative, move to colonial-era texts, and conclude with literature from the early republic. The course will provide an introduction to the origins of American literature and an opportunity to closely study significant works.
Readings will include travel journals, captivity narratives, essays, poetry, and fiction. Texts will likely be chosen from the writing of the following authors: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Mary Rowlandson, Jonathan Edwards, Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, William Grimes, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
