Spring 2017 Course Descriptions Department of English UConn-Stamford Helpful hints about courses offered: The Major Requirement A (Engl 2600), single-author course for the major (Major Requirement D), and capstone (Major Requirement E) will next be offered in Fall 2017. We offer at least one pre-1800 course each semester (Engl 3111W this term) and at least one ethnic/postcolonial distribution (Engl 2301W, Engl 3318 this term). We offer a variety of survey and methods courses each semester (Major Requirement B: this term 3111W, 3123; Major Requirement C: this term 2407, 2408, 2411). English majors can now take 9 credits (3 regular courses) of electives (this is new you can change your catalog year to 2015 or later with the registrar). You now have more freedom to enroll in courses you may be interested in, even if they happen to meet a formal requirement you have already satisfied. If you keep your current, pre-2015 catalog year, creative writing courses like 3003W continue to count for Methods C.2. 1000-level courses do not count toward the English major. Non-majors are welcome in advanced courses; check your preparedness with an instructor before registering if you have questions. Campus Director Professor Terrence Cheng is teaching a course this semester open to all students, including non-majors: Engl 1701, a creative writing class drawing on his expertise as a novelist. Majors should consult their assigned advisors. For further questions, or for advice to nonmajors, consult Professor Roden, English Curriculum Coordinator, at frederick.roden@uconn.edu The English minor is highly recommended and easy to accomplish, requiring a British literature survey (2100 or 2101), American literature survey (2201/W or 2203/W) and 3 more courses at the 2000-level or higher. For more information consult an English faculty member. Remember that upper-level English courses make great related field classes for other majors. Check with your major advisor for appropriateness of choices. The English Major can help you get an internship and a job! Find out how by consulting the Career Center and in conversation with other majors. Reach out to English faculty at any time for more information about the major. 1
English 1103: Renaissance and Modern Western Literature Professor Frederick Roden Mondays 3:35-6:05 p.m. What is the modern? Do we date that period to the Renaissance (literally the rebirth, of ancient classical learning), now called the Early Modern period, to the renaissance of the twelfth century, to Modernity in art, music, and literature (the dawn of the 20 th century)? In this course, we will examine representative works of western literature (European and American, and their diasporas) to pose this question in doing the work of cultural history. How did the modern world and modern sensibilities and subjectivities of the individual get constructed? We will pay close attention to identities: questions of gender, sexuality, race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, abledness and otherness, to name a few. This course satisfies the GenEd 1.B content. English 1616W: Major Works of British and American Literature Professor Morgne Cramer Tuesdays and Thursdays 3:30-4:45 p.m. English 1616W will focus on classics in English and American Literature from the 18 th century to the present. We will read novels, poetry, plays, and essays. Reading units will be organized by themes, not chronology: (1) manifestoes; (2) the quest narrative and bildungsroman; (3) romantic love in literature; (4) revision and stepping out Readings are designed to be brief and provide a panoramic sampling of masterpieces in English and American literature. You will be introduced to, for example, the following authors: Gloria Anzaldua; Margaret Atwood; James Baldwin; Toni Cade Bambara; J. M. Coetzee; William Blake; W. E. DuBois; T. S. Eliot; Homer; Judy Grahn; Langston Hughes; James Joyce; Adrienne Rich; Ntozake Shange; George Schuyler; Shakespeare; W. B. Yeats; Alice Walker; Jeanette Winterson; Virginia Woolf. This course satisfies the GenEd 1.B content and counts for a W competency. 2
English 1701: Creative Writing I Professor Terrence Cheng Wednesdays 3:35-6:05 p.m. We will read and discuss contemporary short fiction, poetry, and play-writing, focusing on the following elements as they are pertinent to each form of writing: character development, conflict, drama, plot, voice, themes, setting, imagery, symbolism, pace, tone, dialogue, and other intangibles. *The class will NOT focus on genre fiction, e.g. romance, mystery, science fiction and fantasy, thrillers, etc. Required reading: THE THINGS THEY CARRIED by Tim O Brien PROOF by David Auburn BUM RUSH THE PAGE, edited by Tony Medina and Louis Reyes Rivera Poems and stories, to be scanned and posted on HuskyCT English 2301W: World Literature Professor Hannelore Moeckel-Rieke Saturdays 10:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Catalog copy: English language literature from Africa, India, Canada, Australia, the Caribbean, and other areas outside of the United States and the British Isles. Writers may include Soyinka, Gordimer, Walcott, Achebe, Markandaya, Atwood, White, Emecheta, Rushdie, Naipaul, Kincaid, and others. Description forthcoming. Engl 2301W counts for a B.2 major requirement, a major postcolonial/diversity distribution, the English minor, a GenEd W competency, and GenEd Category 4(international). English 2407: The Short Story Professor Serkan Gorkemli Wednesdays 6:20-8:50 p.m. In this course, we will study the theory and history of the short story as a literary form and read its fine examples by significant American and international writers. The course textbook is The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction (8th, compact edition, Bedford/St. Martin s, 2011) edited by Ann Charters. In the first half of the semester, we will read stories by the European and American masters of the 3
genre, such as de Maupassant, Chekhov, Hawthorne, Poe, Carver, O Connor, Oates, and Paley. The second half of the semester is organized around the themes of race and racism; fantasy and supernatural; childhood, adolescence, and initiation; love, marriage, and infidelity; and war and revolution. We will discuss these themes in short stories by the following authors: Achebe, Baldwin, Chopin, Díaz, Ellison, Gilman, Hurston, Jackson, Kafka, Kincaid, Lahiri, Lawrence, O Brien, Tan, Updike, and Vonnegut. In-class activities will include lectures, discussions, work in small groups, and the screenings of the short film adaptations of few of the stories assigned. In our discussions, we will focus on the literary elements of plot, character, setting, point of view, style, and theme in short stories, and you will write five 2-page textual analyses that respond to specific stories, and a midterm and a final exam that compare and contrast authors uses of the elements of fiction in multiple stories. Daily quizzes will test your knowledge of the stories assigned. This course is open to all students who have satisfied the first-year writing requirement. If you have any questions, please send an email to serkan.gorkemli@uconn.edu. This course counts for the English major C (Methods), the English minor, and GenEd 1.B. *********************************************************************************** English 2408: Modern Drama Professor Pam Brown Hybrid/Blended: Mondays and Wednesdays 12:20-1:10 (campus), Fridays (online) A survey of plays from the early twentieth century to the present day. We'll begin with the feminist realism of Susan Glaspell then quickly branch out to the musical collaborations and epic theater of Brecht, the memory plays of Williams, and the minimalist poetics of Samuel Beckett. They will provide the foundation for studying August Wilson, Yazmin Reza, Lyn Nottage, Tony Kushner, and others. We will also study the best musicals ever written, from West Side Story to Hamilton. Frequent responses and play reviews; the class will see one or two productions. This course counts for the English major C (Methods), the English minor, and GenEd 1.B. English 2411: Popular Literature The Outcast Professor Pam Brown Hybrid/Blended: Mondays and Wednesdays 2:30-3:20 (campus), Fridays (online) Why are outcasts such crucial figures in popular culture and literature? Those considered dangerously different -- the alien, the criminal, the loner, the freak, the insane -- usually play villains, but this course will look at stories that show them as complex beings whose portraits redefine what is human. 4
Films from many eras ( Frankenstein, Edward Scissorhands ), fiction and short stories (Dickens, Poe, Octavia Butler), fantasy epics (Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter), plays and film adaptations (Othello/O), TV shows ( Dexter, Orange is the New Black ) and Broadway shows ( Wicked ) are examples of the kind of material we will discuss. Students will create a blog and and share films, stories and videos frequently with the class. This course counts for the English major C (Methods), the English minor, and GenEd 1.B. English 3003W: Advanced Expository Writing Business Writing Professor Fran Shaw Two sections available: Mondays 6:20-8:50 p.m. or Tuesdays 6:00-8:30 p.m. Writing effective letters, memos, proposals, reports, press releases, and other business documents. Sharpening skills so all writing is clear and error-free. A limited number of writing courses can count toward the English major (C.2) and minor. This course also satisfies a GenEd W requirement. Engl 3111W: Medieval British Literature Professor Frederick Roden Tuesdays 5:30-8:00 p.m. What does the medieval signify? English 3111W concerns a search for origins. We will examine what is called the beginning of British literature as we look to the invention of a native literary tradition on English soil. Even so, the course is about modernity and postmodernity as we interrogate how we moderns and postmoderns have invented The Middle Ages : how we have defined what makes the premodern ; how we have made and continue to make the Middle Ages. In English 3111W we will read classic, canonical works of medieval British literature from Beowulf to Chaucer and beyond with a keen sense of who we are as readers: anthropologists removed in time and space who attempt to glimpse another culture. From the Arthurian to the monastic, we will delve into finding meaning in the medieval even as we explore what meaning has been made of the Middle Ages throughout the centuries (and make meaning of that). In the process, we will be particularly conscious of questions of ethnicity and nationhood, gender and sexuality, violence and feeling. What did it feel like to live in what is called medieval society? How did the premodern individual feel? 5
Counts for the major B.1 and pre-1800 distribution requirements; counts for the minor and GenEd W competency. English 3123: British Literature from 1890 to the Mid-Twentieth Century Professor Morgne Cramer Thursdays 5:30-8:00 p.m. The modernist writers of late nineteenth and early twentieth Britain responded to what they experienced as cataclysmic shifts in cultural norms caused by, for example, the women s and homosexual rights movements, World War I, the birth of Freudian psychoanalysis, the rise of the Labour Party. Modernists revolted against Victorian social and literary norms and inaugurated fundamental innovations in literary style and genres. We will contrast authors' reactions to social controversies (gender, family, war, capitalism, empire, class, sexuality, the aims of art, etc.) and narrative, linguistic, and poetic conventions (point of view, the romance and quest plot, stock characters, etc). Class work will focus on historical and biographical background on authors and works as well as close readings of the texts. Counts for the English major B2 requirement and English minor. English 3318: Literature and Culture of the Third World Topic: Politics, Society, and Gender in Contemporary Middle Eastern Writings Professor Nehama Aschkenasy Tuesdays and Thursdays 2:00-3:15 p.m. A study of the works of contemporary Middle Eastern writers, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish. Among the topics: the transition from the old Arab way of life through the upheavals later in the 20 th century to current conflicts; the geo-political and economic instability and their effect on the social fabric and individual fates; the attitudes to the ethnic, religious, or sexual "other," and human rights issues; the Israeli-Palestinian discord and the tragedy of a dual claim to the same land; the roles and status of women and the emergence of women writers; the gendered language of geopolitical and military strife; the phenomenon of the transnational writer. Recommended to students interested in literature and society, politics, gender issues, contemporary Middle East, and modern Israel. Engl 3318 meets the diversity requirement for the English major and the Gen Ed requirement in Content Area 4 (International). It also counts for the minor in English, Middle East Studies and WGSS. This is a core course for the Certificate in Judaic & Middle Eastern Studies. 6