University of Connecticut Waterbury Campus Department of English Course Description Booklet Spring 2018

Transcription

1 University of Connecticut Waterbury Campus Department of English Course Description Booklet Spring 2018 The pages that follow contain section-by-section descriptions of the Department of English undergraduate course offerings for the spring 2018 semester at the Waterbury campus. Prepared by individual instructors, these descriptions are much more precise and detailed than those given in the University Catalog.

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3 W 1616 MAJOR WORKS OF ENGLISH & AMERICAN LITERATURE General Education Requirements: Content Area One (Arts & Humanities) and one Writing Competency course Includes important works from the major genres and historical periods since Beowulf CREATIVE WRITING I Required for the Concentration in Creative Writing 1701-W31 (MW 11:15-12:30) Dulack, Tom English 1701 is for any student regardless of your major who is interested in writing poetry, short stories, novels, plays, and/or screenplays. Drawing on the experiences of my own professional writing career as a playwright and a novelist, I like to show students how almost any story idea can be improved and enlarged, sometimes surprisingly into scripts for stage and/or screen. I find that a workshop atmosphere rather than a standard classroom environment works best in helping to develop ideas from scratch into literary forms, and so we test our ideas by reading our material out loud to the class and then engaging in informal discussions. Sometimes I will bring in actors to read promising material and give the writer the benefit of that kind of experience which can be very valuable. We are not after finished work; we will be trying to stimulate and encourage new work and ideas for new work. Each student will be evaluated relative to the kind of thing he or she is trying to write. Obviously someone trying to write sonnets cannot be compared to someone writing a play. A short story writer may actually write more than someone writing a play. A one act play will be judged on a different scale from someone attempting the first draft of a novel or from someone writing a feature length screen play. And so forth. The only common denominator is a desire to write creatively and some evidence that the student actually is not deluded by thinking that he or she is capable of it BRITISH LITERATURE II General Education Requirements: Content Area One (Arts & Humanities-Literature) o Plan: Section B2 (Survey and period courses after 1800) or F (Elective courses) o 2017 Plan: Section B1 (British Literature) or F (Elective courses) Meets the British Literature requirement for the English Minor Meets one of NEAG s Secondary Education British Literature Requirements 2101-W31 (M 10:45-1:15) Barreca, Regina 2203 AMERICAN LITERATURE SINCE 1880 General Education Requirements: Content Area One (Arts and Humanities-Literature)

4 English Major Requirements: o Plan: Section B2 (Survey and period courses after 1800) or F (Elective courses) o 2017 Plan: Section B2 (American Literature) or F (Elective courses) Meets the American Literature requirement for the English Minor Meets one of NEAG s Secondary Education American Literature Requirements 2203-W31 (TuTh 2-3:15) MacLeod, Glen Modern and contemporary American literature: Whitman, Dickinson. James, Wharton, Twain, Chesnutt, Jewett, Chopin, Stephen Crane, Dreiser, Frost, Stevens, Williams, Cather, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, and others INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY STUDIES o Plan: Section A (Introduction to Literary Studies) o 2017 Plan: Section A (Introduction to Literary Studies) 2600-W31 (Th 11-1:30) Carillo, Ellen This required course for English majors will introduce students to the field of literary studies, as well as the primary questions and methodologies of the field. Readings will largely come from the modernist period (roughly ) and include the poetry and novels by authors such as T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Ezra Pound. Students will explore and respond to readings during regular class discussions. Throughout the course, students will learn relevant critical and literary terms, as well as practice different theoretical approaches while reading the course s primary texts. Students will also learn how to compose literary critiques and engage with other literary scholars. The course s ultimate goal is to prepare newly-declared English majors for more advanced courses in the major RESTORATION AND 18 th CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE o Plan: Section B1 (Survey and Period Before 1800) or F (Elective courses) and Distribution requirement 1 o 2017 Plan: Section B1 (British Literature) or F (Elective courses) and Distribution requirement W31 (Hybrid-Blended: See Student Admin) Lynch, Rachael 3503 SHAKESPEARE I General Education Requirements:

5 o Plan: Section D (Major Author) or F (Elective courses) and Distribution requirement 1 o 2017 Plan: Section D (Major Author) or F (Elective courses) and Distribution requirement 1 Meets one of NEAG s Secondary Education British Literature Requirements 3503-W31 (MW 1:25-2:40) Dulack, Tom 3509 STUDIES IN INDIVIDUAL WRITERS o Plan: Section D (Major Author) or F (Elective courses) o 2017 Plan: Section D (Major Author) or F (Elective courses) Meets a requirement for the Concentration in Irish Literature 3509-W31 (T 3:30-6) Lynch, Rachael Colm Toibin Colm Tóibín is one of the most important, prolific and well-regarded Irish authors writing today. He was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, in He began his career as a journalist and travel writer, and while he is now primarily a novelist, his interest in current affairs and social issues continues to be evident. This multifaceted writer is bold, experimental, and relevant. He is particularly fascinated by families, usually dysfunctional families, and also by the importance of place. His books take us from Spain to Ancient Greece to the Brooklyn of the 1950s, and through his imagination we see stories as varied as that of Henry James and the Virgin Mary in her old age. In this class we will proceed chronologically through a selection of Tóibín s work, including a representative selection of his short stories, Bad Blood: a Walk Along the Irish Border (1987), The Heather Blazing (1992), Blackwater Lightship (1999), The Master (2004), Brooklyn (2009), Testament of Mary (2012), and Nora Webster (2014) STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND CULTURE o Plan: Section C (Methods) or F (Elective courses) o 2017 Plan: Section F (Elective courses) 3623-W31 (Tu 6:30-9) MacLeod, Glen The World of Henry James Henry James ( ) had one of the longest and most prolific careers of any major American writer, spanning the remarkable period from the Civil War to the First World War. His principal subject was the lives of wealthy, privileged Americans, both at home and abroad. Like his friends William Dean Howells and Edith Wharton whose work we will also read he portrays upper-class life during the Gilded Age with an insider s knowledge and a shrewdly critical eye. The second half of the nineteenth century was a time of rapid industrialization

6 when great fortunes were made and great cultural institutions like the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art were founded. It was also a time of great social inequality and spiritual anxiety, when wealth was concentrated in very few hands, the established order was threatened by new money, poverty and greed turned people into victims and predators. It makes for great stories! We will also pay special attention to James s painter-friends like Whistler, John Singer Sargent, John LaFarge, and Frank Duveneck. We will watch four excellent movies made from novels by James and Wharton. James: Washington Square, The American, The Turn of the Screw; Howells: The Rise of Silas Lapham; Wharton: The House of Mirth, The Eyes, and Afterwards.