Instructor-Provided Class Descriptions for Fall 2009
Please click on the following selections or scroll down to view descriptions.
Undergraduate Classes | Writing Programs Classes | Graduate Classes
Undergraduate Classes
Eng 221 A Survey of English Literature to 1800
Instructor: Rosalynn Voaden
Section Line Number: 70832
Time: MWF 11.50-12.40
This is a survey course of English literature from its earliest written texts to the eighteenth century. Because of the vast time range and the large amount of material to be covered, texts will not be subjected to in-depth literary analysis. Instead, the focus of the course will be primarily on literature as a product of specific historical and cultural circumstances. In order to foster this understanding, we will first study the historical background of the period, and then read a representative literary text. The first lecture on all texts will be exclusively devoted to the historical background; subsequent lectures, and breakout group discussions will concentrate on linking the historical background to the text under discussion. Students will be expected and encouraged to explore in their papers and presentations the cultural and historical influences on various literary works.
Monday and Wednesday classes will be in large lecture format; Friday classes will be breakout groups led by TAs. Assignments will include breakout group assignments, a final paper, a midterm and a final exam.
This course fulfils the requirement for Literature before 1800.
ENG 242 : Literatures of the US from 1860 to the Present
Instructor: Eric Aldrich
Section Line Number: 70838
Time: 10:30-11:15 TTH
Description: This course will survey major developments in American Literature from the late 19th and 20th centuries. Through exploring literature created over the last century and a half, we will question what it means to be "American" and how various "American" identities are reflected in literature. We will examine major literary movement such as Realism, Modernism and Postmodernism and explore the various incarnations American literature has taken in each of these periods. The course seeks to question why these periods emerged in their historical moments and what the literature reveals about American identity within those periods. Students will also develop critical reading and writing skills, and practice discussing texts.
Eng 294: Monsters, Medieval to Modern
Instructor: Rosalynn Voaden
Section Line Number: 83507
Time: MW 2-3.15
Would you know a monster if you saw one? Are all monsters big, ugly and terrifying? Or does the monstrous lurk beneath a benign facade, revealing itself only when you have been lulled into passivity? All cultures construct monsters which reflect the concerns and anxieties of the society, so monsters vary greatly over time and space. This course traces the development of the monster in English literature from Grendel to King Kong. We will consider the physical appearance of monsters, their sexuality, their intelligence and their desires. We will also examine their origins - who makes monsters? God? The devil? Mad scientists? Do monsters make themselves? Throughout the course we will try to understand the perennial fascination and fear of monsters and, through the evocations of them in literature, examine their function in society.
Works studied will include: Beowulf; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; The Tempest; Frankenstein; Dracula; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; Grendel (by John Gardner). Assignments will include a short paper, a long paper, reader responses, a midterm and a final exam.
This course fulfils the requirement for Literature before 1800 and/or Literature after 1800.
ENG 326: English Drama 1660-1800
Instructor: Bradley D. Ryner
Section Line Number: 83498
Time: MW 2:00-3:15
Description: In 1642, the outbreak of the English civil war closed the public playhouses, and they remained closed until Charles II’s restoration in 1660. This long hiatus caused many theatrical traditions to die, but it also allowed subsequent playwrights—who were now writing for audiences largely unfamiliar with pre-Restoration theater—to develop new conventions. In this course, we will examine the ways in which Restoration and eighteenth-century playwrights reworked older traditions while creating a new theatrical vocabulary. We will examine the significance of innovations such as the introduction of female actors, and we will consider the development of theatre alongside changes in political and social conditions.
ENG 354: African American Literature: Post Harlem Renaissance
Instructor: Lynette Myles
Section Line Number: 82107
Time: 4:40-7:30 p.m. Tues
Description: This course will examine the African American literary tradition from the Harlem Renaissance to the present. It will focus on major black literary works and African Americans’ contribution to the canon of American literature. Students will become familiar with the major periods in twentieth century African American literature, and understand how these periods reflect historically with African American culture. The course readings will include a selection of novels, plays, short stories, and essays along with other materials that will help fill in the historical and cultural context of such works. Through individual analyses and informative discussions, students will use the literature as a way to investigate critical issues on race, gender, and class. Further, students will develop techniques of literary analysis and will recognize the importance of critical reading, writing, and thinking skills with examining literature.
ENG 394: New Nobel Laureates
Instructor: Elizabeth Horan
s.l.n. 83469
time: T/Th 1:30P-2:45P, Cowden 218
"Europe still is the centre of the literary world ... not the United States...The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature ...That ignorance is restraining." Horace Engdahl, Secretary, The Swedish Academy, Oct. 1, 2008.
Who merits the Nobel Prize in Literature? How is the Prize, currently valued at about a million dollars, chosen and awarded? Why did Borges and James Joyce never receive the Prize? Why were Pearl Buck and Tagore honored? How has Alfred Nobel, a French-speaking manufacturer of dynamite made in Russia who died in the 19th century, given Sweden a leadership role in contemporary culture?
This class examines the criteria for excellence, controversies, scandals and cultural politics involved in awarding a prestigious international prize. We will read work by recent Nobel Prize winners from all over the world: novelists Orhan Pamuk, Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Marquez; non-fiction by V.S. Naipaul, drama by Pinter and Fo; experimental writing by Jelinek.
In lieu of a midterm, the class devotes the two weeks of October to debating and predicting the likely winner for this year's Nobel Prize, which is traditionally announced in mid-month. Students will also argue for who we think SHOULD win the Prize, in years to come. Past favorites have included Phillip Roth, Haruki Murakami, Bob Dylan, Cees Nooteboom, and Carlos Fuentes. In the final weeks of the semester, we will read work by the newest Nobel Laureate in Literature.
This class will stretch and challenge you to think about creativity in international dimensions. Studying this prize will also provide you with a good general understanding of how prizes in general are awarded, and what sorts of strategies are involved in winning them. There will be short readings and brief papers designed to encourage students to develop skills in writing clearly and concisely about literature as related to contemporary questions of transnationalism, identity politics, humanism, and postcolonialism.
Non-Majors are VERY welcome. This course is available for Honors College credit, and fills numerous requirements for English majors: upper-division course in critical theory; an upper-division course in gender, American ethnic literatures, and/or postcolonial studies; Transnational, Postcolonial, and Global Literatures; Literary Theory and Interdisciplinary; post 1800 Literature and Culture.
English 394: What is English? - English Studies in History
Instructor: Ryan Skinnell
Section Line Number: 84753
Time: 10:30-11:45 TTH
Description: English departments across the country house a variety of sub-disciplines including linguistics, creative writing, English education, literacy studies, cultural and critical theory, composition, rhetoric, literature, foreign languages and literatures, and a host of others. An obvious question arises: What is English studies? This class will look at what it means to “do English” from the perspective of undergraduate English majors with the goal of answering a host of related questions—What do English majors do? What should they do? What does majoring in English mean for majors and graduates? How do they explain what they do that is useful and valuable? This course will seek to investigate what it means to be in English studies through reading assignments, discussions, and writing assignments.
ENG 394: Reds, Rebbes, and Radicals: Jewish American Literature 1916-present
Instructor: Brian Diamond
Section Line Number: 85786
Time: 10:30-11:45 TTH
Crosslisted: REL 394
Description: In 1916, the world was on the precipice of great change. WWI ground its way through Europe. The Bolsheviks were poised to bring communism to Russia. And in America, an explosion of Jewish immigrants in New York City brought together a volatile mix of old-world religious traditions, radical political activism, and artistic innovation.
This class, will track the line of Jewish literary thought, from these early radicals to present day, attempting to create a narrative out of the fractious movements that characterize Jewish American literature in the 20th and 21st century. From Zukofsky's experimental poetry, to Woody Allen's satirical wit, to Alen Ginsburgh, Alicia Ostriker and Michael Chabon, this class will bring to the forefront some of the important (and often ignored) Jewish writers who helped sharpen the edges of contemporary American literature.
English 401: Queer Lives, Queer Theory
Instructor: Robert Sturges
Section Line Number: 78490
Time: 1:30P-2:45P TTH
Description: Queer Lives, Queer Theory
In this course, we will examine queer life writings—autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, letters, and even trial records—that record a wide range of queer lives in their own words: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender. Reading assignments will focus primarily on the modern era, but will include material stretching back to ancient Greece, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance as well, and will cover a variety of cultures and ethnicities. They will also be contextualized with regular reading assignments in contemporary Queer Theory. Class discussions and writing assignments will encourage students to reflect on their own lives and experiences of queerness—regardless of their identification or orientation—as well as on the life texts and theoretical contexts.
ENG 414: Studies in Linguistics: Semantics
Instructor: Carrie Gillon
Section Line Number: 80106
Time: 9:00-10:15 TTh
Description: This course is an introduction to formal semantics. Topics to be covered include meaning, truth-conditions, compositionality, sets and functions.
ENG 414 Introduction to Applied Linguistics
Instructor: Bryan Smith
Section Line Number: 83701
Time: TuTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
Description: This course provides an overview of the field of Applied Linguistics.
English 416-1001: Chaucer in Middle English: Chaucer’s Narrative Art: The Canterbury Tales
Instructor: Professor Newhauser
Section Line Number: 79681
Time: TTh 3:00 - 4:15 p.m.
Description: A detailed examination of the composition, manuscript presentation, genres, narrative techniques, and cultural contexts of many of the tales in The Canterbury Tales, one of the most important and brilliant collections of short narratives produced in the English language. We will read a sample of Chaucer’s courtly genres, fabliaux, and religious tales. Our major concentration will be on the comparative study of these narratives in two contexts: first, that of the parallel transmission of closely related stories in various versions throughout medieval Europe, and second, that of the interrelation of tales (and their tellers) within the fragments of Chaucer’s fiction of a Canterbury pilgrimage.
ENG 422: Shakespearean Fetishes
Instructor: Bradley D. Ryner
Section Line Number: 77439
Time: M 4:40-7:30
Description: A “fetish” is a thing that seems to have a magical and perhaps dangerous power over a person. One can even say that fetishism blurs the very line between subjects and objects, people and things. From lucky rabbit’s feet to shiny leather boots, any object (or person, or part of a person) is liable to become a fetish. In this course, we will focus on a series of such objects in Shakespeare’s plays, including: a handkerchief, a headless body, a flower, books, letters, and various pieces of clothing and jewelry. We will read works by Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and modern anthropologists to understand the process of fetishization, and we will ask what paying attentions to fetishes can tell us about Shakespeare’s plays, Renaissance England, the history of sexuality, the development of capitalism, and even why “Bardolaters” fetishize Shakespeare today.
English 424: John Milton’s Paradise Lost
Professor David Hawkes
Material: John Milton’s Paradise Lost is arguably the greatest work of art in human history. Milton deliberately and consciously set out to create an epic poem whose range, scope and ambition surpassed Homer, Virgil, Ovid, and even the Bible itself. He believed that his personal biography left him uniquely qualified to compose such a work. Milton devoted his life entirely to study from earliest childhood, and he has a reasonable claim to be the most learned man of his age. But what really sets him apart from virtually all other artists is his intimate involvement in the revolutionary politics of seventeenth-century England. Milton was a leading civil servant to Oliver Cromwell’s Council of State, the body which governed England during the interregnum, and he was closely involved in formulating and implementing government policies. When the revolution eventually failed, Milton was faced with the task of explaining how an omnipotent and benevolent God could have allowed His cause to be defeated, and this produced the complex, moving theodicy which is Paradise Lost. Milton came as close as anyone ever has to achieving the impossible goal he set for his poem: to ‘justify the ways of God to men.’
Professor: David Hawkes is one of the best-known Milton scholars in the world. He has published four books on literature and philosophy, and many articles in such journals as The Nation, the Times Literary Supplement, Milton Studies and the Journal of the History of Ideas. Professor Hawkes edited Paradise Lost for the Barnes and Noble Classics series, and this will be the text used in this course. His biography, John Milton: A Hero For Our Time will be published by Counterpoint Press in November 2009.
Format: This is a ten-week on-line course. The only text required will be Professor Hawkes’s edition of Paradise Lost (Barnes and Noble, 2004). Apart from that, all the readings will be on-line. The course will be divided into ten week-long modules, each of which will include the following:
Reading
· a written lecture of 2-3,000 words by Professor Hawkes
· either one or two books of Paradise Lost
· one critical essay from an on-line database
Writing (to begin with the second module)
· a response of approximately 500 words on the reading for that module
· at least two posts to the class discussion board
· regular participation in the class chatroom
· a final paper of 2-3,000 words, due at the end of the course
ENG 426: CULTURE AND EMPIRE
TTH 9-10:15 PM, Art 240
Professor Julie Codell
OFFICE: Art 250 EMAIL: Julie.codell@asu.edu PH: 480-965-3400
In this course we will examine ways in which British art and literature of the "high imperial" period (1870-1914) expressed and shaped the national discourse on imperialism in England. Content includes paintings, sculpture, photography, advertising and newspaper cartoons of colonial subjects (e.g., landscapes, battle scenes, harems, imperial politics, ethnography) by artists such as the Pre-Raphaelites, Edward Lear, Frederick Lewis, Julia Margaret Cameron; visual culture in international exhibitions; non-fiction tracts and travel literature; and short stories, novels and poems (e.g., by Alfred Tennyson, Algernon Swinburne, Rudyard Kipling, Rider Haggard, Joseph Conrad). This material will be coordinated with histories and theories of colonialism and postcolonialism (e.g., Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Mary Louise Pratt) to explore the role of culture in imperial politics and in the formation of modern notions about race, gender, and national identity. This course will be taught as a seminar and will consist of discussions and student presentations after the midterm. Students will be able to pursue visual and literary interests and the course will focus on the British Empire in India, parts of Africa, and the Middle East. Students will learn a basic set of terms and ideas about the British Empire and explore how the empire was represented in visual and literary works in Britain.
ENG 440 : Modern American Fiction
Instructor: Clarke
Section Line Number: 73234
Time: TTH 10:30
Description:
In this class you’re going to read some of the best American novels ever written—by people such as Willa Cather, Jean Toomer, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Anita Loos, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright, along with a few others. We’ll consider these works both as a product of their time, examining the context in which they were written, and also in terms of what they say to us at the start of the next century. We’ll look at issues of race, gender, history, politics, language, family, place, and storytelling. In particular, we’re going to look at these texts as love stories—not in the traditional sense, but in exploring the possibility of love in the modern world. The reading load will be heavy but the books are fascinating. Two papers, a midterm, and a final. Attendance and participation are required.
ENG 465/561: IDENTITY AND WORLD FILM
ARS 494/598 and FMS 494in ART 220, TTH 12:00 PM to 1:15 PM Professor Julie Codell OFFICE: Art 250 PH: 480-965-3400 EMAIL: Julie.codell@asu.edu
In this course students will explore how identities of gender, race and national original are treated in films and especially how genres (e.g., Westerns, detective stories, musicals, etc.) intersect with identities. Through genre films can naturalize stereotypes, so that they are reinforced, or critique them. Students will explore films from the US (both independent and Hollywood films), Spain, Britain, India, and Iran.
The four areas of genre, gender, race and world cinema all focus on issues of identity in various ways—identities represented in films and audience identities as experienced and projected onto films. Identities of genres, nations, genders, and races are not biological and cannot be rigidly categorized or classified. Identities are transient, social, and historical, subject to cultural changes and historical circumstances. Often filmmakers, characters on screen and spectators all participate in multiple identities, derived from their individual lives and groups to which they may belong, and these multiple identities are not always even compatible with one another.
Students will be introduced to concepts of identity, genre theory, race, gender, third cinema, Bollywood, and independent film. They will explore many genres—comedy, drama, thriller, musical— and films that mix genres or create new ones. Students will learn how to examine films in larger cultural contexts of world cultures, public receptions, historical events, and political or social circumstances. The course will have a website containing course assignments and films. Assignments will consist of short quizzes, lectures, readings, discussions of readings and films, and short web assignments. Readings will be from one textbook used in the course.
There will be film showings on Thursdays at 4:30 in Life Sciences E 106. Most films are about 2 hours long. Showings are optional; all films are on 4-hour reserve in the library and students are welcome to view films by ordering them from outside agencies.
English 480: Methods of Teaching Composition
Instructor: Dr. Jessica Early
Section Line Number: 73239 & 73255
Time: T/Th 10:30-11:45
Crosslisted: 480/507
Description: This course focuses on the knowledge and skills needed to teach writing at the middle and high school levels. Students will gain a repertoire of instructional and evaluative techniques for teaching the various modes of writing and for helping students to improve their written products. Students will practice various forms of writing instruction and assessment, guiding writers through a process model, creating a writers’ workshop, using writing portfolios, learning about writing across the curriculum, designing composition units and integrating writing instruction with other language arts and other disciplines. Students will participate in various writing activities themselves.
ENG 487/Adv. CW Poetry (formerly 411) /J. Savard
Not a lecture class (prerequisite ENG 310/Poetry)
Available to students who have already taken the ENG 310 CW poetry workshop.
(First seats are offered to English majors with the Concentration in CW-Poetry.)
You will be reading a few essays about the craft of poetry and several volumes of poetry by
contemporary authors. We will be discussing a number of these every time we meet which will be for three hours each week. You will be writing approximately six poems during the semester, and revising them when required. Each poem will be written in consideration of the specific guidelines provided you. As the poem is your own, some room for moving away from the specifics will always be permitted.
The Advanced Poetry Workshop is dynamic, and we are all needed for that experience. We participate verbally. We are present. You are just beginning to learn about writing and you have also learned quite a bit already. You will be expected to write and speak about poems with enthusiasm and a working critical vocabulary in this class. You will be making the language your own. Feel it, try it out, take it, let it take you.
Agreement in discussion is not necessary; you just need to know why you think and feel that something is working or not in a poem, and to say it with clarity and with insight into the poem’s structure or craft.
A poetry workshop is work. It is also an opportunity and can be a pleasure for you to be discussing poems--- yours, and those by other writers. Remember, you are not "literary critics." My job as instructor: to guide the feedback of the poem in process, as every one who comments has a different point of view. All are important. My being the instructor doesn't mean that I always see everything that is happening in the poem. I try to find most of what is and what is not working, and guide you along those lines to discuss, and then move on through the poem. You probably know, but I guide discussion based on the experience of my writing/ publishing poems, and of my studying and teaching poems for many years. In case there is a confusion here, I want to say: I am not a critic; I am your teacher. You are each others' teacher as well. You walk away with more knowledge about your poem, and you use what is useful, continuing to process your poem. It belongs to you once again to collect, revise, and perhaps send it out into the world again.
Think of this class as a new place, a new time where you are writing poems that you didn't write before and others are working with you to make them stronger poems.
Think that you are bound to learn something new about the whole process, as well as review some points that you already know.
Objecting to the process is not what this course is about. Argument is not what this course is about, though sometimes it occurs, naturally. Revealing and sharing insights about the poem at hand, and also the craft of writing poems in general is what's important.
Please remember when receiving feedback: no one is against you or your poem. A balanced return by the reader of the work is healthy and can lead you to write better poems.
Eng 498: Poetry Capstone
Instructor: Sally Ball
Section Line Number: 73250
Time: Tuesday/Thursday: 10:30-11:45
Description: This is the final workshop in the sequence for the undergraduate concentration in Creative Writing/Poetry. Students must have already completed 210, 310, 411, and 495.
Carl Phillips points out that in relationship to myth and fable, we are both the inheritors of a long tradition and also the living version of those stories--and, in our retelling, we determine not only whether they will survive but how, in what version. In this class, we will read poems based on myths and we will write some. These new poems (your poems!) may be narrative, or they may not, or they may be dramatic monologues, or lyric poems, or meditative poems. We'll read a retelling of Ovid's Metamorphoses together, and then a few whole collections that depend on ancient stories for inspiration, for contrast, for a veil. We'll look at a range of poems that approach the same myths differently….. You'll also be able to spend some of your working energy with other models (not necessarily Greek or Roman, but potentially Celtic or Norse or Egyptian or from the Americas--). Each student will write a new poem every week, in addition to working on a final manuscript (including revisions of these poems as well as poems from previous classes), and reading and discussing the assigned texts.
Required texts:
Ted Huges, TALES FROM OVID
Frank Bidart, DESIRE
Louise Gluck, MEADOWLANDS
Rachel Zucker, EATING IN THE UNDERWORLD
We'll also read poems by Yusef Komunyakaa, Stephen Dobyns, Heather McHugh, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Tony Hoagland, Mary Jo Bang, Linda Gregg, Reginald Shepherd, John Ashbery, and (or) others.
Writing Programs Classes
Please click on the following Writing Programs courses to view their description page:
Stretch Program Courses:
WAC 101, WAC 107 (first-year writing)
400-level courses:
ENG 474 Review Writing
ENG 494 (rhetorical theory and criticism)
Graduate Classes
ENG 500 Research Methods: Rhetoric and Composition
Maureen Daly Goggin
Mondays 4:40-7:30
Wisdom begins in wonder.
--Socrates
Knowledge separates the educated from the common people. Neither knows. But the common person claims to know, while the educated knows that he does not know. . . . In the society of men of letters, the most abundant fruit that we shall reap is modesty of spirit by which no one would presume to know beyond his measure (89-90).
--Giovanni Battista Vico On Humanistic Education1
I felt clueless, a feeling I have since come to learn is at the heart of the scholarly process. In academia, one is in a perpetual liminal space. As soon as you answer a research question, you ask another, your growing body of expertise simply marking the expanding edge of your ignorance.
--David Gold “The Accidental Archivist”2
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course introduces graduate students to scholarly issues, designs and methods in rhetoric and composition. It focuses on ways of developing research problems and questions, designing studies, and conducting, reading and evaluating research. Some of the questions to be explored are:
• What are the major paradigms of research in rhetoric and composition?
• What is the nature of archival and empirical research in the field?
• How are research problems and questions made operational and transformed into
plans of action? That is, how does one design a study?
• What is the relationship between research problems/questions and research design?
• What variety of scholarly reading and writing strategies operate within scholarship in
rhetoric and composition? What is the relationship between these diverse literate
practices and the multiple modes of inquiry that comprise the complex arena of
research?
• What are the limitations of various research and scholarly methods?
Although this course provides an overview of various kinds of scholarship in the field (e.g., historical, feminist, theoretical, rhetorical, critical discourse analysis), it focuses primarily on archival and the broad, diverse range of empirical methods. Even if you never plan to conduct an empirical study, critical awareness of empirically grounded research in rhetoric and composition is crucial because so much scholarship in the field rests on claims derived from empirical work even when that work is not referenced. Further, regardless of your professional path, you may often be asked to justify curricula, programmatic or other kinds of decisions on empirical research studies; thus, you need to be able to read these reports critically and argue about them from an informed position.
What we [rhetoric and composition scholars] need . . . is room for multiple research methods, for flexible paradigms and theories that can help researchers adapt to changing needs of participants and the research community.
--Gesa Kirsch3
COURSE GOALS:
· to help you develop a breadth of knowledge about scholarship in rhetoric and
composition
· to help you become critical readers of research and scholarship in the field
· to help you become familiar with some of the major research and scholarly genres in the
field
· to help you gain experience in posing research questions and planning a research design
· to give you experience in writing a research proposal—including crafting research
questions, reviewing the relevant scholarly literature, and writing the design of a study
· to contribute to your professionalization in rhetoric and composition
Each researcher . . . takes (often unwittingly) an epistemological stance concerning the nature and genesis of . . . knowledge [and] this stance exerts a strong influence on what he or she takes as acceptable research.
--Patrick Thompson4
1 Vico, G. B. On Humanistic Education. Trans. G. Pinton & A. Shippee. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1993.
2 Gold, David. “The Accidental Archivist: Embracing Chance and Confusion in Historical Scholarship.” Beyond the Archives: Research as a Lived Process. Eds. Gesa E. Kirsch and Liz Rohan. Carbondale: Southern IllinoisUP, 2008. 13-19.
3 Kirsch, Gesa. “Ethics and Future of Composition.” Composition Studies in the New Millennium. P. 135.
4 Thompson, Patrick. “Were Lions to Speak, We Wouldn’t Understand.” Journal of Mathematical Behavior 3 (1982): p. 157.
English 507: Methods of Teaching Composition
Instructor: Dr. Jessica Early
Section Line Number: 73239 & 73255
Time: T/Th 10:30-11:45
Crosslisted: 480/507
Description: This course focuses on the knowledge and skills needed to teach writing at the middle and high school levels. Students will gain a repertoire of instructional and evaluative techniques for teaching the various modes of writing and for helping students to improve their written products. Students will practice various forms of writing instruction and assessment, guiding writers through a process model, creating a writers’ workshop, using writing portfolios, learning about writing across the curriculum, designing composition units and integrating writing instruction with other language arts and other disciplines. Students will participate in various writing activities themselves.
ENG 530: Old English Language and Literature
Instructor: Dr. Heather Maring
Section Line Number: 73256
Time: 3:00-4:15, T, Th
Description: If you like dragons, philology, saints (dog-headed and otherwise), or poetics, then you will probably like studying Old English language and literature. If you like thinking about translation, etymologies, oral poetry, or our uncanny relationships with earlier versions of the English language, then sign up for Old English. This class moves quickly, introducing you to Old English grammar, orthography, pronunciation, and vocabulary so that you may begin translating major works of prose and poetry from the Old English period (roughly 450-1100 C.E.).
The Old English sequence (English 530 and 531) may meet the language requirement for the M.A. and Ph.D in English.
ENG 536: Contemporary Imaginative Revision of American Literature before 1900.
Instructor: Elizabeth Horan
s.l.n. 83468
Time: W 4:40P-7:30P, Lang and Lit 269
How do contemporary writers and artists use materials from the past to argue and present perspectives about the present? What are the present debates about pre-1900 “America” and what should they be, in the future?
Our readings address three historical “moments,” beginning with European-Indigenous encounters as shown in visual narratives, with films and maps. We’ll move on to consider how the biographies and fiction about “Founding Fathers” and other materials represent the American Revolution. We conclude by considering contemporary fictional representations of the Civil War.
Alongside our survey of life-writings, poetry, art and music created before 1900 in what is now the United States, we will read contemporary best-sellers and view clips from recent films relating to the course’s focus. Among the contemporary texts we will read: Mayflower, by Nathaniel Philbrick; The Hemingses of Monticello, by Annette Gordon-Reed; John Adams, by David McCullough, and the young adult science fiction novel, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, by M.T. Anderson.
This course will be run as a seminar, mixing lecture, discussion, and at least one field trip to the Phoenix Art Museum. Students will complete one book report, a collaborative project, and a final paper, developed in drafts and workshopped with peers. All majors and concentrations are welcome. This course meets distribution requirements in pre 1900 literature for the English MA/Ph.D. Literature programs.
ENG 545 : Studies in Women's Literatures
Instructor: Beth Tobin
Section Line Number: 83500
Time: TH 4:40-7:30
Description: Jane Austen: Her Novels, Her Fans, and Her Critics
Jane Austen’s popularity has exploded in the last two decades. Not only have her novels been the basis for several popular movies and television shows, but her work has also been elevated in the academy from minor to major author status. In this class we will grapple with the criticism and fan cultures (often intertwined) that have arisen around this literary figure.
We will read all of Jane Austen’s six novels as well as some of her letters, juvenilia, and unfinished work. We will also examine the criticism that her work has inspired, exploring the different critical approaches—feminist, historical, formalist, poststructuralist, and postcolonial—that have been employed to analyze her fiction. We will also examine Austen as a popular icon, looking at film, television programs, websites, organizations, literary tours of Austen sites, action figures, and contemporary fiction, such as Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996), The Jane Austen Book Club (2004), and such novels as Stephanie Barron’s Jane and the Stillroom Maid (2000), one of the many series that feature Austen as a heroine, in this case a detective, and the very silly Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009), with Elizabeth Bennett as a zombie slayer.
ENG 553: Technologies of Writing: Videogame Studies
Instructor: Alice J. Robison
Section Line Number: 73259
Time: 4:40-7:30pm Mondays
Description: This course serves as an introduction to the interdisciplinary academic study of videogames' cultural, educational, and social functions in contemporary settings. By playing, analyzing, reading and writing about videogames, we will examine debates surrounding how they function within socially situated contexts of learning and literacy. In addition to a variety of readings from the humanities and social sciences, students will be expected to complete a minimum of 40 hours of a contemporary commercial videogame. The course is taught as an introductory survey though its format is similar to that found in a graduate seminar. Prospective students may wish to examine previous versions linked through the instructor's website: http://alicerobison.org/syllabi/
ENG 556 (1001): Theories of Literacy: Community Literacy
Instructor: Elenore Long
Section Line Number: 88111
Time: Mondays 4:40-7:30 p.m.
Description: Community literacy is a way that everyday people “go public”—by naming injustices, participating in institutional decisions, and envisioning a world they would rather inhabit. Community literacy also offers ways for everyday people from places of privilege to be part of that process, primarily by learning to listen. This course focuses on intercultural listening as an entry point into community-literacy studies. The course is predicated on cultural difference as a resource for joint inquiry and problem solving; likewise, the course seeks to document the institutional roles and structures that constrain and condition our efforts to listen and learn, to discover and change. ENG 556: Theories of Literacy / Community Literacy invites you to build theory—with big ideas, yes, but also from the ground up, based an intercultural inquiry that you’ll design to elicit and to circulate the insights of others. In sum, this course introduces the interdisciplinary study of literacy—its history, theories, and problems—even as it seeks to cultivate rhetorical skills in intercultural collaboration and inquiry.
ENG 465/561: IDENTITY AND WORLD FILM
ARS 494/598 and FMS 494in ART 220, TTH 12:00 PM to 1:15 PM Professor Julie Codell OFFICE: Art 250 PH: 480-965-3400 EMAIL: Julie.codell@asu.edu
In this course students will explore how identities of gender, race and national original are treated in films and especially how genres (e.g., Westerns, detective stories, musicals, etc.) intersect with identities. Through genre films can naturalize stereotypes, so that they are reinforced, or critique them. Students will explore films from the US (both independent and Hollywood films), Spain, Britain, India, and Iran.
The four areas of genre, gender, race and world cinema all focus on issues of identity in various ways—identities represented in films and audience identities as experienced and projected onto films. Identities of genres, nations, genders, and races are not biological and cannot be rigidly categorized or classified. Identities are transient, social, and historical, subject to cultural changes and historical circumstances. Often filmmakers, characters on screen and spectators all participate in multiple identities, derived from their individual lives and groups to which they may belong, and these multiple identities are not always even compatible with one another.
Students will be introduced to concepts of identity, genre theory, race, gender, third cinema, Bollywood, and independent film. They will explore many genres—comedy, drama, thriller, musical— and films that mix genres or create new ones. Students will learn how to examine films in larger cultural contexts of world cultures, public receptions, historical events, and political or social circumstances. The course will have a website containing course assignments and films. Assignments will consist of short quizzes, lectures, readings, discussions of readings and films, and short web assignments. Readings will be from one textbook used in the course.
There will be film showings on Thursdays at 4:30 in Life Sciences E 106. Most films are about 2 hours long. Showings are optional; all films are on 4-hour reserve in the library and students are welcome to view films by ordering them from outside agencies.
ENG591-1002 (SLN 83656) / LIN591-1001 (SLN 81559)
Seminar: Teaching Second Language Writing
T 4:40-7:30
Instructor: Paul Kei Matsuda
http://matsuda.jslw.org/
This course provides an introduction to various issues in the teaching of second language writing in a wide variety of contexts. After exploring various instructional contexts as well as the characteristics of different types of students and their texts, we will consider various instructional practices and strategies, focusing on course and assignment design, reading-writing connection, teacher and peer feedback, grammar instruction, classroom assessment, plagiarism and text borrowing strategies, and negotiating language differences.
Options for the seminar paper include (but not limited to): a course design project, a review article, an autoethnography of second language literacy development, an action research project, among others. This course is an appropriate preparation for teaching ESL writing courses in the ASU Writing Programs. (This course assumes no prior knowledge of linguistics or TESOL).
In Fall 2009, students in this course will have an opportunities to get to know internationally recognized researchers and teachers in the field of second language by participating in the Symposium on Second Language Writing, which will be held in November 2009 at ASU. For more information, visit: http://sslw.asu.edu/2009/.
ENG 594 : Graduate Poetry Workshop
Instructor: Jeannine Savard
Section Line Number: 73277
Time: 4:40P-7:30P T
Description: Traditionally, the first poetry workshop for which in-coming graduate students register, but open to any MFA graduate student. It is designed to familiarize the graduate student poet with the typical graduate workshop setting that ASU’s Creative Writing Program in poetry offers. It is a workshop where some critical attention will be paid to assigned poems written by contemporary authors, but the majority of the time will be spent in discussing the students’ poems. The workshop’s objective is to aid students in furthering their development of craft by offering approaches and critical analyses of their free verse writing. Students will be revising their poems based on the feedback they receive in the workshop as these poems will eventually become their MFA thesis. Besides the few small volumes of poems that I’ll select for students to read for the class, texts will also be individually prescribed.
Assigned texts: tba.
ENG 598 Writing for Scholarly Publication
Instructor: Robert Bjork
Section Line Number: 83477
Time: 12:00P-1:15P TTH
Description: This workshop will help students develop the professional writing and editing skills necessary to make them competitive in the job market. Each student must begin the course with a promising scholarly paper already in hand (e.g., one that another professor has encouraged the student to continue working on); during the course of the semester each will completely revise his or her paper three times according to the suggestions made in class discussion; each will prepare a detailed, written report on the third draft of another class member; and each will present the class with a brief list of publication outlets for her or his particular paper. Readings will be determined by who enrolls in the course and by the subject matter of their papers. Enrollment is limited to 10-15 students, and instructor approval is required.
LIN 620: The Interaction Approach in SLA
Instructor: Bryan Smith
Section Line Number: 80158
Time: TuTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
Description: This course focuses on the theoretical underpinnings and currect research findings from the Interactionist Approach to Second Language Acquisition.
English 632-1001: Advanced Studies in Medieval/Renaissance Literature/Culture: Medieval Drama
Instructor: Professor Newhauser
Section Line Number: 83516
Time: W 6:05-8:55 p.m.
Description: The texts of medieval drama demonstrate a vibrant expression of dramatic elements in medieval Christianity. We will focus on a wide spectrum of these elements, in particular in their preservation in documents in England: the theatricality seen in clerical actions during the liturgy; mimetic embellishments of liturgical tropes, especially for Easter; monastic representations of Scriptural narratives; the cycle plays from urban centers in the north of England in the later Middle Ages that dramatize the full extent of salvation history; non-cycle plays staging the lives of saints and other matters of religious-catechetical interest; and morality plays of enacted homiletic content. But the moralities, in particular, also demonstrate political and social concerns that are carried on in the interludes of the sixteenth century. All of these areas – religious, moral, social, and political – will be part of our investigation of historical (and historiographical) developments in the medieval English theater.
ENG 636 : Modernism and the Modern American Novel
Instructor: Deborah Clarke
Section Line Number: 80601
Time: 4:40P-7:30P W
Description: In this class we’ll explore modern American fiction in the context of modernist studies. We’ll begin with some critical/theoretical work on modernism: how is it defined? what, if anything, distinguishes American modernism from British or global modernism? most importantly, in what ways is the secondary work useful in working with the fiction? We’ll then move to the fiction, including work by Wharton, Cather, Toomer, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Loos, and Hurston. Course requirements will likely include an oral presentation, a short paper or book review, and a 15-20 page seminar paper. Spirited participation is a must.
ENG 651 Advanced Studies in the History and Theories of Rhetoric
Historical Perspectives on Writing Program Administration
Meets in Durham Language and Lit 160 (Tempe) Thursdays 4:40- 7:30 pm
Professor Shirley K Rose
Seminar readings and activities will engage members in three inter-related intellectual projects:
1) reading standard composition/rhetoric histories from the perspective of enduring issues and concerns for writing program administrators, with particular attention to the importance of diverse and evolving institutional contexts and changing demographics of student populations;
2) examining changes in the roles and responsibilities of Writing Program Administrators from the late 19th through the early 21st centuries
3) considering issues in documenting college writing programs
Course work will include reading responses, collaborative experiential learning projects, and individual scholarly projects. A tentative course reading list is available on request: Shirley.Rose@asu.edu
Course work will also include a collective group project designed, developed, and completed in collaboration with Professor Irwin Weiser’s English 680W Writing Program Administration seminar meeting concurrently at Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN) for the Fall 2009 semester. Members of the ASU and Purdue seminars will also participate in cross-institutional discussions of course readings.
ENG 654 Rhetorics and Literacies of Sustainability
Instructor: Peter Goggin
Section Line Number: 83478
Time: 4:40P-7:30P W
Description: Even though scholars in English studies are ideally situated to take up the challenge of fostering environmental literacy in the classroom, until quite recently, little practical attention has been paid in the field to such concerns as the welfare of future generations, preservation, and conservation. For the most part we have left these concerns to our colleagues in sciences and social sciences who have a longer tradition of utility embedded in their disciplinary ideals. While scholars of environmental rhetoric such as Jamie Killingsworth have pointed to interest in sustainability as an emerging and growing area of inquiry, others have been less generous. Glen Love states, “Given the fact that most of us in the profession of English would be offended at not being considered environmentally conscious and ecologically aware, how are we to account for our general failure to apply any sense of this awareness to our daily work?” More recently, Derek Owens argues that “composition studies, and, indeed all of English Studies, needs to recognize as a field that sustainability is not only equal in importance to race, class, and gender but also entails many of the concerns associated with those rubrics.” In this course we will explore scholarship in rhetoric and literacy studies that challenges us to enter conversations on the environment as we look to a sustainable future.
http://www.public.asu.edu/~petergo/
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