Fall 2018 English Course Descriptions

ENG 201: Introduction to Creative Writing
Dr. Deborah Fleming and Dr. Joe Mackall
MWF 10:00-10:50
Requirement for Creative Writing Major & Minor, Requirement for the Integrated Language Arts Major

This course introduces basic techniques and forms of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Regular writing and reading assignments illustrate specific aspects of poetic and prose narrative form.

ENG 203: American Literature
Dr. Russell Weaver
MWF 10:00-10:50
Core Humanities

We will be reading Dickinson’s Poetry, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, O’Connor’s Everything That Rises Must Converge, Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sweet Bird of Youth.

Two papers and two presentations.

ENG 301: Writer's Workshop: Poetry
Dr. Deborah Fleming
MWF 1:00-1:50
Requirement for Creative Writing Major & Minor, Elective in the Integrated Language Arts Major

Students will write and discuss their own poetry, study poetic form, keep journals of reading, and write one paper on a book of contemporary poetry.

ENG 306: The Essay
Dr. Joe Mackall
MWF 11:00-11:50
Requirement for Creative Writing Major & Minor

This course is an analysis of the essay as both literary genre and source of ideas. Student writing may include essay composition.

ENG 314: Literature and Gender
Online 16-week format
Dr. Sharleen Mondal
Core Humanities, elective in the English and Integrated Language Arts majors, elective in the English and Creative Writing majors and minors

This course focuses on literature that centrally engages issues of gender, including but not limited to masculinity, femininity, patriarchy, biological vs. socially constructed notions of sex and gender, and intersections between gender and other factors--including race, class, religion, and sexuality--in shaping human experience

ENG 316: Postcolonial Literature
Dr. Sharleen Mondal
MWF 11:00-11:50
Core Humanities, elective in the English and Integrated Language Arts majors, elective in the English and Creative Writing majors and minors

This course focuses on literatures shaped by colonialism and imperialism. The course emphasizes in-depth study of colonial and postcolonial literature supported by an understanding of the historical, social, cultural, and political contexts of that literature.

ENG 317: Studies in Shakespeare
Dr. Naomi Saslaw
T Th 10:50-12:05
Core Humanities, requirement in the English and Integrated Language Arts majors, elective in the English and Creative Writing majors and minors

Students will read examples of Shakespearean histories, comedies, romances, and tragedies, exploring language and dramatic technique to develop an understanding of the structure and themes.

ENG 319: Modern Drama
Dr. Jayne E. Waterman
T Th 12:15-1:30
Core Humanities, elective in the English and Integrated Language Arts majors, elective in 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, Ibsen’s realism to Quiara Alegría Hudes’ triumph in trauma. All of the course 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 projects and participation.

ENG 338: Themes and Topics in Literature
W 6:30 p.m.
Dr. Naomi Saslaw
Core Humanities; Elective in the English major, English minor, and Creative Writing minor

This course explores a major idea or theme through a wide range of literary and related texts. Typically, the seminar will focus on a particular historical, social, or artistic idea

ENG 351: Advanced Composition
MWF 2:00
Dr. Linda Joyce Brown
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 powerful enough that a reader will feel compelled to keep reading. The skills you develop in this course should help you beyond college, no matter your career path.

ENG 372: Nietzsche and the Problem of Values
Dr. Russell Weaver
T Th 9:25
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.

ENG 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 genre, 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 (subject to change):
John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel
Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer  
Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock
Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
poems by Anne Finch and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

ENG 425: American Literature I
Dr. Linda Joyce Brown
MWF 12:00
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, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Brockden Brown, Catherine Maria Sedgwick, Edgar Allan Poe, William Grimes, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Spring Reading Series Begins on February 26

The English Department will bring three writers to campus as part of the annual Spring Reading Series. All readings are in Schar 138 starting at 4:00 p.m.

Erika Krouse - February 26

Leila Philip - April 9

Daneen Wardrop - April 23


Dr. Joe Mackall provides an overview of the prose writers in the series.

Erika Krouse

I’m really excited about the prose writers featured in this year’s Reading Series. Erika Krouse and Leila Philip are two extraordinary writers and teachers. The New York Times Book Review called Erika’s debut collection of stories, Come Up and See Me Sometime, “potent” and “original.” The Times also wrote “Krouse leaves us with a feeling of unbounded, exhilarating possibility.” Erika is also the author of the novel Contenders. Erika’s fiction has appeared in a variety of publications, including the New Yorker, the Atlantic and the Kenyon Review. Of course we could court many fiction writers who have great publications, but that’s never enough for us. We need people who are student-centered teachers. Erika Krouse is a caring teacher and a terrific person. She’s already agreed to attend my English 102 class and to talk to creative writing students as well. Erika has a great sense of humor and a quirky personality.

Another great person and student-centered teacher is our nonfiction writer Leila Philip. Leila writes poetry and nonfiction.

Leila Philip

 
Along with her memoir, A Family Place: A Hudson Valley Farm, Leila has also written a collaborative work with her husband painter Garth Evans. The collaboration, Water Rising, includes Leila’s poems on nature, beauty and loss with Garth’s abstract water colors. Leila is also a columnist for the Boston Globe. She’s currently writing a book about fur trappers, for which she has spent hours with trappers in New England, even going so far as acquiring a trapper’s license.

Dr. Deborah Fleming offers some background on the poet in the series.

Daneen Wardrop

Winner of the 2015 Richard Snyder Publication Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, Daneen Wardrop's Life As It, chosen by David St. John, is a collection of prose and free verse poems that brings together images from centuries ago as well as today and makes us aware of the transfiguration of the commonplace. Laura Kasischke called it "poetry of both narrative and musical accomplishments." Daneen Wardrop has published two previous collections of poetry as well as several books of literary history. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and the Poetry Society of America Robert H. Winner Award. She teaches American literature at Western Michigan University.

Dr. Joe Mackall Wins Sixth Mentor Award

On January 26, 2018, Joe Mackall, Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing, won his sixth Academic Mentor Award at Ashland University. Given that many professors on campus have never won one of these awards, to win six is extraordinary, and the English Department is honored to have this committed educator among its ranks.

Maggie Andrews and Dr. Joe Mackall

Maggie Andrews, a senior Creative Writing major from Mansfield, Ohio, nominated Mackall for the award. An excerpt from Andrews's nomination letter details Mackall's role in her academic growth:

Joe has a wealth of knowledge and experience that he shares with his students. He is a published writer, but I have never met someone so well-versed in what it takes to become a writer. He guides us as an equal, like we all share common frustrations. I have looked at my creative works from the start of my college journey to now and I can’t believe the difference. One hundred pages no longer scares me. I have fought through bad habits as he has mentioned them.

Dr. Joe Mackall was the reason I came to Ashland University, the reason I stayed at Ashland University, and the reason why I am prepared to graduate from Ashland University. I have grown as a student and as a person under his mentorship. His office door is always open. I am constantly bugging him and he never complains. He provides valuable criticism and feedback that has molded my abilities. He has given me confidence in writing. Joe is not the average professor. He goes above and beyond to take care of his students. When I walk into one of his classes, I feel like a weight has lifted off of my chest. I am comfortable in there and it never feels like class. It feels like a fun exercise that I’m discussing with peers. 

The day I achieve my dreams, dreams that I have had since being a little girl, I will remember Joe Mackall. I will remember his kindness, his humor, his knowledge, and his ambition. I will remember him and I will thank him. I will thank him for everything he has done for me and my writing. I will thank him for a great college experience. I will thank him for helping me become the person I am today. I will thank him for helping me to achieve my dreams, a debt I will never be able to repay.

Mackall's response to winning the award reflects his rapport with his students:

There's nothing better than being a mentor, especially when it comes to working with other writers. If I were really doing my job right, I'd be a mentor to every one of my creative writing students. I have to say that having a student like Maggie Andrews gives me an unfair advantage in the mentoring game. Maggie is a first-rate writer. She's talented, intelligent, open to and eager for criticism. She's also an amazingly good human being. With Maggie Andrews as a student, I should receive the luckiest professor alive award. 

Congratulations, Dr. Mackall! 

New Faculty and New Genre for Ashland MFA

By Christian Kiefer, Director of the MFA Program

The MFA is celebrating a whole roster of new faculty, many of whom began teaching for our program this semester. Poets Dexter Booth, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Douglas Manuel, and Sandra Simonds join longtime faculty poet Mark Neely. Returning nonfiction faculty members Bonnie J. Rough, Jill Christman, and Kate Hopper are now joined by Lily Hoang and River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize-winner Angela Morales. New and returning fiction faculty include Nayomi Munaweera, Derek Palacio, and Matthew Salesses. Also joining the fiction side, and representing the first steps toward a new track specializing in science-fiction and fantasy writing, are Brian Conn and Sarah Monette. Along with River Teeth and the Ashland Poetry Press, the MFA will once more be a presence at the annual AWP conference, this year held in Tampa.

With the addition of our new faculty, the Ashland MFA has become a program that is truly celebrating and promoting diversity. This builds upon the sturdy foundation already in place: a curriculum based on writing and editing a book-length project, our unique single-residency model (as opposed to the two residencies of most low-res MFA programs), and the sense of community engendered by the way we run our non-residential, online semesters. It also looks like our Paris residency will resume this summer, offering students a chance to study in the city of lights and experiencing all that such a journey entails.

Click here for more information about the MFA program and here to learn about the MFA faculty.