Literature Courses Spring 2005
ENL 2400.01: Love, Madness & Creativity: Dr. Hutchins
Many besides Shakespeare have made connections among --the
lover, the madman, and the poet. English authors of the Romantic,
Victorian, and Modern periods seem to have been fascinated by
romantic love, various forms of 'madness,' the
primacy of the imagination and, often, the relationship among all
three. In this course, we'll make use of this thematic
direction to consider selected works of major writers and to give a
sense of major developments in literature and in Western culture
from the late 1700's until the present. In addition, we
will use extra-fictional 'evidence' from the period
to learn how the period viewed and responded to love, to
'madness,' to the creative imagination-- and to
various forms of 'fantasy' particular to this
culture. Letters, diaries, advertising, sermons, journalism,
children's stories, etc., can also aid us in investigating
how 19th and 20th Century authors and their readers viewed mental
illness and how they expressed the glories and dangers of giving
oneself over to romantic love or to the creative imagination. I aim
to make reading assignments ample but also reasonable
('less can be more'). Students will also develop
journal responses, a semester paper (analytical and/or creative),
and a brief presentation. Please feel free come by WHB 207A to talk
with me about the course.
ENL 3760.01: Advanced Studies in the British Novel: 18th
and 19th Centuries: Dr. Murray
'I can't find a cup of tea big enough or a novel
long enough,' C. S. Lewis once said. In this course, you
will read some of the works which Lewis (as well as readers before
and after him) have considered to be masterpieces of the 18th and
19th century British novel: Daniel
Defoe�s
Robinson Crusoe, Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews, Jane
Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Hogg's Confessions of
a Justified Sinner, Charles Dickens' Bleak House, George
Eliot's Middlemarch, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound
of the Baskervilles, and Rudyard Kipling's Kim. Our
concerns will be humor (the English have a great tradition of
comedy and laughter), social and economic classes, the continuity
and development of gender roles, and the characteristic qualities
and abilities of each novelist studied. Students should read either
Bleak House or Middlemarch (perhaps both: they are substantial
works) before the course begins in January.
ENL 3800.01: World Novel: Dr. Paine
This course on the novel will include texts from a variety of literary traditions. The course aims to provide a 'third space' in which American students can gain a perspective on other cultures (French, Russian, Italian, Japanese, Senegalese, South American) through their literatures, and in the process come to understand their own culture 'differently'. Issues of decline and fall/'the end of an era,' love, gender relations, and the family are some of those where there is resonance among these works. Please be sure to acquire the exact edition of each text indicated below, as most have appeared in several editions and in several translations. The Bookstore should have these in stock in December, and I hope participants will choose some Christmas reading from among these books. If you would like to research and do your presentation on a particular author, let me know! First come, first served.
Madame de Lafayette, The Princess of
Cl�ves
Oxford World's Classics Stendhal, The Charterhouse at Parma
Modern Library, 2000 ed. Tolstoy, Anna Karenina Penguin Classics,
2000 ed. Soseki, Kokoro Gateway Proust, Swann's Way Modern
Library Time Regained Modern Library Lampedusa, The Leopard
Pantheon Garcia
M�rquez,
Love in the Time of Cholera Penguin Ba, So Long a Letter Heinemann
Enchi, Masks Vintage
ENL 3890.01: African-American Literature: Dr.
Curtis
The primary goal of this course will be to give depth to a
subject everyone seems to know at least a little about: The Harlem
Renaissance. The course will proceed through four stages:
'Foreground' will help us establish, through
primary and secondary readings, how the idea of a 'New
Negro' developed, from Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois,
and Ida M. Wells through the Washington, D.C. of James Weldon
Johnson, to Jean Toomer, Alain Locke and Charles Johnson;
'Flowering' will be a multi-media exploration of
the texts that marked the height of the New Negro Renaissance,
including those approved by the black intelligentsia, like
'talented tenth' writers Countee Cullen, Jessie
Fauset, and Nella Larsen; 'Folk' traces four
artists' commitment to developing a folk aesthetic in
African American literature: Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston,
Claude McKay, and Sterling A. Brown; and 'Fisk and
Beyond' will bring these explorations to Nashville, where
we'll create a project that catalogues Nashville's
extraordinary 'Renaissance Legacy.' Each stage will
involve readings, discussions, formal and informal writing, and
perhaps a midterm exam. The final project will build on knowledge
we've acquired in class as well as research on and off
campus. Readings will include all or parts of Washington's
Up From Slavery; DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk;
Locke's The New Negro anthology; Toomer's Cane;
Fauset's Plum Bun; Larsen's Passing; fiction and
poetry by Hughes; fiction and drama by Hurston; McKay's
Home to Harlem and much, much, more.
ENL 3930.01: American Realism: Dr. Dale
We will consider the different ways that literary Realism
(including Naturalism) was defined and practiced in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Texts include
Pudd'nhead Wilson, The Awakening, Maggie: A Girl of the
Streets, The American, The Age of Innocence, Their Eyes Were
Watching God, The Great Gatsby, and selected stories.
ENL 4350.01: Early Modern English Drama: Dr.
Wells
Even if we grant that Shakespeare is the center of what we might
call the dramatic universe, the Renaissance in England still
provides a solar system filled with many splendid planets each
worthy of exploration in its own right. The period from 1580-1642
would still be celebrated as one of the greatest eras of dramatic
production in the history of the arts even if Shakespeare were to
be taken out of the equation. Indeed, in his own time,
Shakespeare's superiority was certainly not taken for
granted. He was engaged in serious competition for the hearts and
purses of London consumers with the likes of Ben Jonson and
Christopher Marlowe, the latter of which enjoyed, for a time at
least, popularity far above Shakespeare's. According to
some theater historians, the most popular play of this period was
not written by Shakespeare; it was Thomas Kyd's The Spanish
Tragedy. The purpose of this class will be to take Shakespeare out
of the equation, at least temporarily (and perhaps only to reinsert
him later), by reading and investigating the works of these other
dramatists in the hopes of better understanding them, first in and
of themselves and also for their importance in understanding the
history and the development of English drama. We will read a number
of works recognizable for their mastery of dramatic form from
luminaries such Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Heywood,
Robert Greene (who died basically in the gutter) Ben Jonson, John
Webster, Thomas Middleton, John Ford, and others. The primary goal
of the course will be to help you increase your ability to read
these plays on your own. By 'reading' I refer not
only to your comprehension but also to your enjoyment of these
fascinating plays. The challenge this goal presents means that we
will focus our energy on the language of the plays. But we will
also read some contextualizing documents to familiarize you with
the background to which the language in these texts often refers. A
couple of papers, a couple of tests, and worlds of fun! A
'must take' (not a mistake) for every English major
(and others interested in great literature).
ENL 4900.01: Seminar in English Studies: The Problem of Fiction: Dr. Wells
This course will probe the nature of fiction and the philosophical, social, and interpretive problems the phenomenon creates. 'Fiction' here points to a general category of the way language is used, and not, as the term often does, to prose fiction, as in the short story and the novel, which are types of fiction but not the only examples of it. We will examine fundamental questions such as the following: What is the nature of fiction? Is there a real, fundamental distinction between fiction and non-fiction? Or to what extent might these categories be purely arbitrary and factitious? Are their qualitative differences between genres of fiction (i.e., prose, poetry, drama)? How does our understanding about the nature of fiction influence our interpretation of literary texts? To wit, does the fictional status of a text have any impact on its efficacy in the political and social spheres? Do (or how do) authors of fiction exploit its nature to artistic ends? What is the relationship between fiction and 'truth' (or 'falsehood' for that matter)? Can fiction teach important lessons? Or can it teach anything at all? Can fiction speak 'truth' to power? Can fiction ever be a legitimate mode of communication? Are 'myths' a type of fiction? How have recent critical movements such as New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, and Feminist Materialism, as well as the rise of new artistic genres, particularly creative non-fiction, challenged the traditional opposition between fiction and non-fiction? Note: This course is for English majors who plan to graduate by December 2005 only.
Writing Class Spring 2005
ENW 2000.01: Theories of Writing: Dr. Holt
This course focuses upon examination of a central question: What
is the relationship between human beings and the texts they create?
To explore this question, students read and apply writing theory
ranging from the classical to the contemporary. Students will
experiment with a wide variety of writing practices over the course
of the semester and will be asked to respond to the work of each
other as well as to the work of professional writers. Assignments
include composing a personal theory of writing; engaging in a
research project involving application of contemporary theory; and
creating and conducting a convocation session for the Belmont
community. In addition to selected readings by writing theorists,
reading selections may include A Hope in the Unseen, by Ron
Suskind; On Writing, by Stephen King; The Curious Incident of the
Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon, and Life of Pi, by Yann
Martel. ENW 2000 is required of all English majors following the
'Writing Emphasis' program, and should be taken in
the sophomore year, before enrolling in 3000-level ENW courses.
Note: This course does not fulfill the general education Humanities
requirement.
ENW 2510.01: Intermediate Composition: Dr. Cox
In ENW 2510, we will explore how and why people are moved to
write about their experiences and seek to articulate their points
of view as we respond to a series of essays from
'alternative' presses and interpret a pair of
novels whose protagonists find themselves outside their comfort
zones. We will then go on to write and revise several essays of our
own; indeed, our efforts at articulating our own viewpoints and
experiences comprise the main activity of the course: the bulk of
our class time will be devoted to workshops that center on our
papers-in-progress. We will help one another
'shape' our essays in these workshops; we will also
review the rules of English grammar and mechanics as necessary.
Readings will include short stories and creative nonfiction:
'The Littlest Hitler,' 'Things We Knew When
the House Caught Fire,' 'The Guide to Being a
Groupie,' and 'How Susie Bayer's T-Shirt
Ended Up on Yusuf Mama's Back,' to name a few
selections. We will also read Dai Sijie's Balzac and the
Little Chinese Seamstress and Mark Haddon's The Curious
Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
ENW 3420.01: Creative Writing: Poetry: Dr. Hutchins
According to Carl Sandburg, poetry is 'the opening and
closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about
what is seen during a moment.' In this course, we will
think about what poetry is, and can be, for each of us as readers
and writers. We'll read some wonderful poems (sometimes
with a thematic emphasis); study and practice various poetic forms;
complete exercises designed to free the imagination and to allow us
both to play without self-censorship and to challenge ourselves as
writers; and talk with each other about all of it. The course will
use a cultural studies approach, examining literature as one
important indicator of the 'felt sense' of a
particular place and time. Don't be deterred by any fears:
our first aim will be to create a supportive and comfortable
community for writing. Newcomers to poetic expression are welcome,
as are those who already write poetry or have studied it in other
classes. I use a portfolio method for assessment for encouraging
risk-taking, for assessing which attempts seem more promising than
others, and for acknowledging revision as a major part of the
process. Also, I will ask each of you to share in the teaching with
a short presentation about a poem
you�ve
selected as 'good.' I use occasional small-group
feedback sessions until mid-term; afterwards each student will
present at least one poem for large-group workshopping. Occasional
journals and reading response requirements may supplement
discussion for purposes of critical thinking and genre exploration.
Please feel free to come to see me (WHB 207A) or ask questions
about the course.
ENW 3510.01: Advanced Composition: Dr. Pinter
How do some creative people create? How do some people best
problem solve? How do many people think more clearly? Through
writing! Writing is an art, as well as skill. Advanced Composition,
ENGW 3510, is devoted to reading and writing creative nonfiction.
The genre encompasses memoir, personal essay, literary journalism,
narrative history, cultural criticism, nature writing, and travel
writing. This seminar is part literature course, part writing
workshop: students read and discuss a variety of incredible texts
and also write and critique their own ventures into creative
nonfiction. Join us. Adventures in creativity, problem-solving, and
thinking await you.
ENW 3530.01: Writing About Place: Dr. Stover
This course will focus on approaches to writing about domestic spaces, including authors who take an ironic, problematic, or complex stance to notions of the domestic (e.g. writing about the inscrutable, the unknown, or the wild in terms of the domestic). Texts will range from essays (Eudora Welty, 'Place in Fiction'; Barry Lopez, About This Life; Jun-ichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows) to novels (Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping) to memoir (Harry Crews, A Childhood: The Biography of a Place; Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings) to poetry (Emily Dickinson's Final Harvest, Elizabeth Bishop, Complete Poems) and more. Along with these literary texts we will read about how 'home' is depicted in country music and how it is portrayed in photographs, films, and paintings. With each text, students will write either an analysis or an imitation of the artist's style as a way to explore their own philosophies of the influences and ironies of domestic space.
