SUMMER 2018 ENGLISH DEPARTMENT UNDERGRADUATE COURSE GUIDE The English department offers a wide variety of courses under two course designators: EngL (for Literature courses) and EngW (for Creative Writing courses). Explore the following guide to learn about courses that you can enroll in this summer to meet Liberal Education or Writing Intensive requirements, to gain hands- on experience working with the community through Service- Learning projects, and to study topics that interest you and challenge you to develop new ways of thinking and communicating. Advising If you'd like help seeing which of these courses will best fit your interests and help you fulfill graduation requirements, please contact Rachel Drake, Advising and Undergraduate Studies Coordinator, at rdrake@umn.edu or 612-625- 4592. Visit english.appointments.umn.edu to set up an advising appointment online.
FULFILL LIBERAL EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS! These courses meet the Diversity and Social Justice in the U.S. Theme LE requirement: ENGL 1301W - Introduction to Multicultural Literatures of the United States, page 3 ENGL 3005W - Survey of American Literatures and Cultures I, page 4 ENGL 3006W - Survey of American Literatures and Cultures II, page 4 This course meets the Historical Perspectives Core LE requirement: ENGL 3004W - Historical Survey of British Literatures II, page 4 These courses meet the Literature Core LE requirement: ENGL 1001W - Introduction to Literature: Poetry, Drama, Narrative, page 3 ENGL 1301W - Introduction to Multicultural Literatures of the United States, page 3 ENGL 1701 - Modern Fiction, page 3 ENGL 3005W - Survey of American Literatures and Cultures I, page 4 ENGL 3006W - Survey of American Literatures and Cultures II, page 4 ENGL 3007 Shakespeare, page 5 FULFILL THE WRITING INTENSIVE REQUIREMENT! These courses meet the Writing Intensive requirement: ENGL 1001W - Introduction to Literature: Poetry, Drama, Narrative, page 3 ENGL 1301W - Introduction to Multicultural Literatures of the United States, page 3 ENGL 3004W - Historical Survey of British Literatures II, page 4 ENGL 3005W - Survey of American Literatures and Cultures I, page 4 ENGL 3006W - Survey of American Literatures and Cultures II, page 4 2
1000- level Literature Courses ENGL 1001W Introduction to Literature: Poetry, Drama, Narrative- 4 credits Meets Literature Core LE and Writing Intensive requirements! This writing- intensive course is designed for students who wish to develop a foundational understanding of literary study, inquiry, and analysis. This course is organized around literary genres, and thus will introduce students to the fundamentals of fiction, poetry, and drama. This course will also question the boundaries of genre and of the category literature itself. Throughout the semester, we will reflect on the central questions: What is Literature and Why do we study it? After successfully completing this class, students will be equipped with the basic critical vocabulary and toolset for engaging in literary study. They will be prepared to analyze literary voice, tone, symbol, motif, theme, imagery, narrative, and form, among other literary aspects. They will also be equipped with several critical cultural lenses, among them gender, race, ethnicity, class, language, and national identity. Sample Career Competency: Improve oral and written communication skills by participating in group discussions and the writing and revision of essays. - 001 MWTh 1:25-4:10PM, Instructor: Shavera Seneviratne <senev007@umn.edu> ENGL 1301W Introduction to Multicultural Literatures of the United States- 4 credits Meets Literature Core LE, Diversity and Social Justice Theme LE, and Writing Intensive requirements! This course will include representative works by American Indian, African American, Asian American, Chicano/Chicana writers, and/or Jewish American writers, ranging from Nobel and Pulitzer prize winning masters to upcoming genre authors and debut authors. In reading these works, we will discuss social and cultural factors informing America's literary past and present. As these authors honor identity, celebrate community, and deal with the complexities of the modern age, they also explore America s shared and problematic past. Because this course is Writing Intensive, we will spend considerable time drafting, discussing, and revising papers. Techniques for writing a paper, close reading strategies, and relevant critical approaches will be discussed. As we tease out the meanings and methods of our texts, we'll also identify and analyze key literary devices. Sample Career Competency: Learn to engage diversity through essay writing, exams, and class discussions focused on US multiculturalism. - 001 MWTh 9:05-11:50AM, Instructor: Abhay Doshi <doshi016@umn.edu> ENGL 1701 Modern Fiction- 3 credits Meets Literature Core LE requirement! In Modern Fiction, we will study a selection of novels and short stories by some of the most compelling and original writers of our time. We will read work by contemporary authors and classic modernists whose stylistic innovations influenced a generation. Because literature is a continuum in which the present responds to the past, we'll note evolutions and developments in the genre over time. We will identify and analyze such elements of fiction as theme, genre, structure, form, language, and context. Sample Career Competency: Gain analytical and critical thinking skills by completing writing assignments that convincingly communicate interpretations of the class readings. - 001 TTh 4:40-8:00PM, Instructor: Hannah Jorgenson <jorge549@umn.edu> 3
3000- level Literature Courses ENGL 3004W Historical Survey of British Literatures II- 4 credits Option to meet a foundation course for the English major/minor! Meets Historical Perspectives LE and Writing Intensive requirements! In this wide- ranging survey of British and post- colonial literature from the late eighteenth century to the present, we will explore representative literary texts and genres from British Romanticism, the Victorian period, Modernism, and the postwar era. Besides analyzing the language, aesthetic features, and technical construction of these literary artifacts, we will examine our readings as reflections of and reactions to social upheavals like the Industrial Revolution, challenges to the traditional role of women, scientific discoveries that sparked religious doubt, and the First World War. Additionally, because this is a writing intensive course, you will familiarize yourself with the process of writing a research paper with a literary focus, which includes finding and successfully incorporating contemporary scholarly research about your topic into your paper, crafting an original argument, utilizing textual evidence, and evaluating existing scholarship. Sample Career Competency: Increase analytical and critical thinking skills by learning how to read closely, understand context and vocabulary, and develop habits of awareness and thoughtfulness as you construct historical arguments in research papers. - 001 MWTh 9:05-11:50AM, Instructor: Melissa Merte <merte149@umn.edu> ENGL 3005W Survey of American Literatures and Cultures I- 4 credits Option to meet a foundation course for the English major/minor! Meets Literature Core LE, Diversity and Social Justice Theme LE, and Writing Intensive requirements! This writing- intensive course will survey the Anglophone literature of what would become the United States from the arrival of English settlers to the Civil War. We will define literature broadly to not only include fiction and poetry but also the sermon, the letter, the essay, the autobiography, and other non- fictional forms. Course topics will include the Puritan theology that cast such a long shadow over the American cultural imagination; the fraught literary construction in the Revolutionary era of a national identity under the influence of such Enlightenment ideals as reason, civility, cosmopolitanism, and sympathy; the Gothic doubts about democracy that attended the literature of the early republic; the rise in the mid- nineteenth century of a radical intellectual and social movement in Transcendentalism; the antebellum ideological struggles over such political issues as slavery, industrialism, women s rights, and Native American rights; and the self- conscious cultivation of a national literary aesthetic in the Romantic prose and poetry of the period later critics would come (controversially) to call the American Renaissance. Sample Career Competency: The wide range of genres and topics in this survey course allows students to envision the United States from different perspectives and to engage diversity. - 001 MWTh 1:25-4:10PM, Instructor: Matthew Brogden <brogd007@umn.edu> ENGL 3006W Survey of American Literatures and Cultures II- 4 credits Option to meet a foundation course for the English major/minor! Meets Literature Core LE, Diversity and Social Justice Theme LE, and Writing Intensive requirements! This course will survey some of the major literary figures, aesthetic movements, and thematic concerns of U.S. literature from the Civil War to the present. Our investigation will identify common traits in the literature that causes it to fit within three very broad literary historical categories: realism, modernism, and postmodernism. We will explore what makes literature created by the people of the United States distinctly American during a period that extends from the Civil War and the outlawing of slavery to women s suffrage, workers movements, the Great Depression, the First and Second World Wars, and the civil rights movement. In addition to reading and analyzing the literature itself in terms of style, form, genre, and language, we will study it in historical context: the complex interplay between the political, the social, the cultural, and the literary in the United States. This approach rests upon the notion that literature is not created in a vacuum; it is influenced by and influences the world in which it is created. Sample Career Competency: The wide range of genres and topics in this survey course allows students to envision the United States from different perspectives and to engage diversity. - 301 ONLINE DISTANCE LEARNING SECTION, Instructor: David Andrews, <andre639@umn.edu> 4
ENGL 3007 Shakespeare- 3 credits Foundation course for the English major/minor! Meets the Literature Core LE requirement! This course is a sampling of Shakespeare's corpus designed for English majors and minors and for other students who have had some prior experience with Shakespeare and wish to study his works in more depth. Our goal will be to view these works simultaneously as cultural artifacts of sixteenth and seventeenth- century England and as enduring classics of world literature that seem to transcend their cultural moment. To this end, we will apply various biographical, social, linguistic, generic, theatrical, political, and intellectual contexts to the plays. We will attempt to understand how these documents from early modern England have spoken so profoundly about the enduring mysteries of human experience from the moment of their inceptive genesis to the present day. Sample Career Competency: Increase applied problem solving skills by confronting challenging texts and demonstrating an understanding through exams and written assignments. - 301 ONLINE DISTANCE LEARNING SECTION, Instructor: Melissa Johnson <joh12032@umn.edu> ENGL 3090 - General Topics: Mental Illness on the Page: Literary Portrayals of Psychological Disorders- 3 credits Counts towards the elective requirement for the English major/minor! According to NAMI The National Alliance on Mental Illness one in five American adults will experience a mental illness during his or her lifetime. In recent years, conversations about mental illness have become more and more prevalent, and recent representations of mental illnesses in media like 13 Reasons Why and To the Bone have sparked controversies over their portrayals and their potential to act as triggers for those living with major depression, anorexia nervosa, and other psychological disorders. In this class, we will focus on representations of mental illness and mental health in literature while learning about access to mental health care in our community. We will attend a free NAMI class educating the public about mental health; visit the Wangensteen Historical Library; and learn about mental health resources on our campus and in the greater Twin Cities, all the while considering who can and cannot easily access these resources. The class will focus on Anglophone literature from the beginning of the 20 th century to the present, paying special attention to authors changing understandings of psychological disorders and techniques for depicting them and their treatment. Starting with Charlotte Perkins Gilman s The Yellow Wallpaper, with its harrowing portrayal of postpartum depression, course texts may include: Sigmund Freud s The Psychopathology of Everyday Life; F. Scott Fitzgerald s Tender is the Night; Virginia Woolf s Mrs. Dalloway; Sylvia Plath s The Bell Jar; Christopher Isherwood s A Single Man; Joanne Greenberg s I Never Promised You a Rose Garden; Jean Rhys s Wide Sargasso Sea; Luke Davies Candy; Susanna Kaysen s Girl, Interrupted; Sherman Alexie s Reservation Blues; Roxane Gay s Hunger; and essays and short stories by such writers as Joan Didion and David Foster Wallace. We might also consider other media such as podcasts (The Hilarious World of Depression, S- Town, therapist Esther Perel s Where Should We Begin?) and television (Thirteen Reasons Why, To The Bone, Lady Dynamite). - 001 TTh 4:40-8:00 p.m., Instructor: Amy Fairgrieve <fairg002@umn.edu> 5
3000- level Creative Writing Courses ENGW 3110-001 Topics in Creative Writing: Speculative Fiction/Science Fiction Workshop: From Rocketships to Gender Politics- 3 credits Counts towards the elective requirement for the English major/minor or Creative Writing minor! In this course, we ll read selected short stories and novels from Golden Age, New Wave, and Cyberpunk- era masters of the genre, such as Neal Stephenson, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Robert A. Heinlein. We ll examine and discuss the sticky situations and far- flung- future- problems of their protagonists, and the cardboard- separations of their problems from our reality. We ll read short stories by more contemporary authors of Science and Speculative Fiction: William Gibson, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, Connie Willis, and many more. We ll watch classics of Science Fiction film, and, like pod people, absorb them into our discussion, and analyze their successes. As we continue to read and consume stories, we ll practice with SciFi- themed writing prompts that will help you develop your own stories and discuss them in workshop with your classmates. This class will help to shape your creative voice as a contribution to the diverse conversation this genre promotes. Sample Career Competency: Complete written assignments and participate in class discussions to gain effective oral and written communication skills. - 001 MW 4:40-8:00PM, Instructor: Damian Johansson <johan025@umn.edu> 6