LITERATURE

EN 200:   Major British Writers: Find the Monster
Instructor: Dr. Kimberly Adams
Major British Writers (English 200) is a survey introducing English majors and minors to the literature of Britain and the British empire, to important literary and historical concepts, and to interpretive and writing techniques.  The Romantic period (1785-1830) will be defined by the writers William Blake, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Shelley, and the Victorian period (1830-1901) by Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, John Ruskin, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.  For the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we will open our lens to include authors from countries once colonized by Britain, such as Ireland and India.  The two most important writers of the course will be Wordsworth, the poet of nature, and Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.  Wordsworth influenced many later poets, including Hopkins and W. B.  Yeats.  Shelley’s Frankenstein will make us think about the monsters that define and horrify each age—monsters such as modern technology, industrialization, imperialism, war, and the violence found within.  Course requirements:  two essays (one incorporating some literary criticism), informal group presentations, a midterm, and a final.   (English major)

EN 220:   Pre-1800 British Literature; Medieval: War and Romance in Early England
Instructor: Dr. Louis Martin
This course explores the cultural heritage of Medieval England through the literature of the period. We will discuss widely different aspects of the time such as aesthetics, political issues, sex roles, and chivalric values. Alfred the Great, Cynewulf, William the Conqueror, Chaucer, The Pearl Poet and other important figures helped shape 1,000 years of English literature, and we will consider ways that Medieval attitudes contributed to the culture of later ages up through current times.  (English major; Core, Western Cultural Heritage; GRW)

EN 230:   Post-1800 British Literature; Modernism: World Wars and Literature
Instructor: Dr. Kimberly Adams
The twentieth century was marked by violence, upheavals, and the destruction of old worlds:  the first and second world wars, the “troubles” in Ireland, the revolutions in Russia and China, the atomic bomb. . .  In this course we will examine the impact of such cataclysmic events on British and Irish literature and culture.  The first unit of the course deals with responses to the world wars by soldier-poets, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Kazuo Ishiguro.  The second unit of the course, “The Irish and the British:  Home and Exile,” focuses on major writers such as W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Seamus Heaney, whose work was shaped by a century of civil and cultural conflict in modern Ireland.  “Book into film” will be an important topic of the course; we will analyze the cinematic “translations” of Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway,  Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, and Joyce’s “The Dead.”  The course assignments include a short paper, a course paper, group work, a midterm, and a final.  (English major; Core, Western Cultural Heritage; GWR)

EN 240: Modern American Literature- The World Turned Upside Down
Instructor: Dr. John Rohrkemper
Students will read fiction, poetry, and drama written during the last hundred years. These have been turbulent years and the restless experimentalism of the writers we will examine reflect the age. A GWR and WCH core course. Sample text: William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. (English major; Core, Western Cultural Heritage; GWR)

EN 240: American Lit: Revolution to Civil War
Instructor: Dr. Carmine Sarracino
This course focuses on the major writers from the inception of our country until shortly after the Civil War, especially those from the middle of the nineteenth century: Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman. (English major; Core, Western Cultural Heritage; GWR)

EN 251: Multicultural Literature
Instructor: Dr. John Rohrkemper
This course will focus on the rich diversity of contemporary American culture and literature with a special emphasis on the experiences of recent immigrants. A GWR and HUM core course. Sample text: Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street (English major; Core, Humanities; GWR)

EN 318:   Studies in Poetry: Metaphysical Poetry
Instructor: Dr. Louis Martin
Resurrected lovers fighting the crowds to meet at judgment day? A blood-swelled flea that serves as a symbol for a wedding? A vengeful ghost coming back from the dead to haunt his former girlfriend? These are only some of the striking and sometimes odd images metaphysical poets used in their work. Drawing on disciplines such as astrology and alchemy, and aiming at creating fresh new symbols and poetic forms, they remade English poetry in the 17^th century. Forgotten for hundreds of years, they were discovered by modern writers who put them back in the canon. (English major)

EN 403: Shakespearean Drama
Instructor: Dr. Louis Martin
Is Shakespeare really that good? As we read the plays, modern films of them will help us fully enjoy and appreciate the greatest English author. We will also compare different films to consider ways a play can present varying interpretations. In addition, our discussions will focus on social, religious, and political values as they are reflected in Shakespeare’s works. (English major)

EN 450: World Authors: Why is Franz Kafka a Modern Classic?
Instructor: Dr. Mark Harman
This course will explore short prose masterpieces by the great Prague-born writer Franz Kafka, ranging from his notorious story about a man who wakes up to find himself transformed into a bug (Metamorphosis) through investigations of the nature of justice in a penal colony and of the uncanny experiences of a country doctor as he makes a house call to the satirical reminiscences of a former ape who can almost pass as a human.
Students will read these stories in new translations from German by the instructor and, in addition to discovering why Kafka is considered a modern classic, will learn first-hand about the art and craft of literary translation. Moreover, both students and instructor will compose explanatory notes about the stories (some of which may be included in an annotated edition forthcoming from Harvard University Press). (English major)

EN 494: Seminar in Literary Theory
Instructor: Dr. Kimberly Adams
Seminar in Literary Theory is the capstone course for English majors in the Literature concentration.   The course builds on your knowledge of literary texts and also gives you needed grounding in literary theory, a subject that has become central to the field.  Literary theorists address issues such as the role of the author, the relation of diverse readers to a text, the development of literary genres, the nature and function of language, and the interconnections of power, knowledge, and authority.  Theory is taught in all or virtually all college English departments, and it is part of the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) Subject Test in Literature.  Literary Theory is one of the largest divisions of the Modern Language Association, the international professional association for scholars of language and literature.   
That said, the study of literary theory is difficult and sometimes anxiety-producing, and the seminar is designed to introduce you to the subject in a non-threatening way.  The seminar will be “for use,” stressing literary applications as much as theoretical knowledge.  In every unit, we will use a particular theorist to interpret a novel.  The pairings include Foucault and Orwell, Bakhtin and Achebe, Said and Conrad, and Butler and Woolf.  The course assignments include a presentation, a midterm, a course paper, and a final.  There are also two short papers and an on-line assignment, which are designed to give you experience working with theory; you will receive credit for these assignments but not a grade. (English major)

 

PROFESSIONAL WRITING

En 180:   CE Introduction to Creative Writing
Instructor: Dr. Matt Willen
Introduction to Creative Writing is a creative expression core course that will explore the expressive potentials writing in a variety of tradition and non-traditional forms. Students will read and write various types of poems (including haiku, prose poems, found poems), various forms and elements of fiction and non-fiction writing, and some of the elements of drama. The emphases of this course will be on the creative process and on the value of creativity in our everyday and academic lives. (Core, Creative Expression; Creative writing minor)

En 185: Introduction to Professional Writing
Instructor: Dr. David Downing
This course is designed to introduce students to a variety of research, writing, and editing tasks most common to professional writers. We will discuss guidelines, contexts, and good and bad models of writing in the worlds of journalism, business and advertising, technical writing, book or magazine publishing, and webpage design.  (English major)

EN 280: Creative Writing- Poetry
Instructor: Dr. Carmine Sarracino
We begin with about five weeks of writing-prompt based creative writing exercises, and then move on to five weeks of writing poems derived from journal entries.  In the last five weeks the focus is on revising poems for the final portfolio. (English major) Register by Instructor

EN 281: The Short Story
Instructor: Various
English 281 is an introduction to the analysis and creation of short stories. Students will use concepts of literary criticism to discuss and write about short fiction. They will also use their understanding of the elements of fiction to generate a variety of topic papers, a research paper and one original short story. (English major; Core, Creative Expression)

EN 282: Technical Writing
Instructor: Dr. Matthew Willen (English major)
A course emphasizing clarity and precision in writing and including instruction in oral and graphic presentation of technical and scientific information. (English major) Register by Instructor

EN 385: Writing and Editing for Publication
Instructor: Professor Jesse Waters
The perfect feature piece about your year in Borneo, or a person-in-action on your day with Lady Gaga – but you have no idea where to take it. Better yet, you never really found out if a writer really can use the term ‘alright’. Here in EN 385, we’ll focus on writing and evaluating query letters; editing strategies in the professional publishing worlds, especially Chicago-style methods; and finding target audiences and creating magazine-need analyses. Additionally, we’ll have visits from working writers who deal with editing and publication on a daily basis. We’ll even pull apart a few book proposals – good and bad – to see what makes the good ones hum and the bad ones hoot. At the end of the semester we’ll submit our own work, and keep our fingers crossed! (English major) Register by Instructor

EN 493: Seminar in Rhetorical Theory
Instructor: Dr. Dana Mead
A seminar for majors in the Professional Writing concentration on the history of rhetoric and its application to the composing process. (English major)

ENGLISH EDUCATION

EN 306: Methods Seminar in Teaching Language and Composition
Instructor: Dr. Matt Skillen
The purpose of EN 306 is to prepare students for the opportunity to teach language and composition in a secondary education setting. The course emphasizes the teaching writing and language at the secondary (middle school or high school) level.  Students will engage in instructional application of various methodologies through research-based teaching demonstrations.  (English major, English education concentration)